


At the Center of the World

by haganenobeato



Series: The Wilderness [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood and Gore, F/M, FMA Big Bang 2017, Gen, Horror, Psychological Drama, Revolving POVs, Survival Horror, Survivor Guilt, Tragedy, Zombie AU, this entire fic takes place in two days i realize, wow a lot happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-01-09 03:36:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12268065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haganenobeato/pseuds/haganenobeato
Summary: Amestris becomes a harrowingly silent place on the afternoon of the Promised Day and only the survivors at the center are left to tread over it. Within a few hours, they won’t be the only ones wandering. The sacrifices are rising and leaving Central is more dangerous than the looming threat of invading armies.





	1. May

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Divine Right of Kings](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/340614) by Oedipus Tex. 



If she concentrated she could sense the distortion. The natural ebb and flow of the world warped or razed, carried off by a torrential flood. It was worse than the aberrant crawling underfoot. It was unholy to the religious man. She wasn’t sure she wanted to feel the absence of fifty million souls. It was silence made tangible, void and emptiness.

She shuddered from the chill, pulling herself closer together.

The world felt as cold as the transmuted stone she sat on. Unfocused, she stared at the transmutation marks, tracing shivering lines with her finger. The fast climb from Central’s depths added to the chill with a cool, whipping breeze that parted the short bangs on her forehead, braids snapping behind her. Tried as she might, the feeling of defeat wouldn’t settle. It didn’t seem real.

Over and over, the events replayed like a looping film reel in her mind, trying to pinpoint where they went wrong. They had plans, countermeasures. They were the heroes. The type of heroes in her tales where the good always prevailed. They triumphed through the hurdles, the obstacles. It always worked out in the end. Together. The books never explained the consequences when the battle swayed in the villain’s favor. There were no lessons to be learned worth the cost; only that evil had decidedly won that day.

She clung to these beliefs, naive and optimistic as they were, because they brought color and imagination and heart to a life that had been cold and disappointing. An undeniable frustration her clan, to be sure. May didn’t want to be the princess waiting to be saved. From a very young age she knew she was never going to be. She wanted to prove her worth as the Dragon’s daughter hailing a low ranking clan and to release them from poverty. To be lauded as the savior of her family was one of her many childlike daydreams. So she turned her sights to Amestris.

In some part of her mind, May acted out her alternative should she come up empty-handed. Upon her return, she would be simultaneously praised crossing the desert and admonished for her recklessness. But that would be all. She’d carry on and find another way out of her socio-economical rut.

However… May didn’t expect this.

The Yao Clan lost their heir.  The Elrics lost their father. Amestris lost its populace.

The rock slowed to a stop. She blinked out the blood and sweat trickling into her eyes. A source of light brightened the decimated chamber, spilling in from the crumbling opening above. She remembered it ominously dark and blood splattered from a battle between humans and… humans that weren’t.

She stood and Xiao May climbed onto her shoulder. The sunlight was soft, welcoming, and warm, creating glimmering sparkles out of the concrete slabs. Squinting, her vision narrowed on a pair of dark silhouettes lying in the light’s circumference. With the pace of her pulse quickening she dashed in between limbs.

The Ishvalan was warm to the touch. The corner of his eyes were wrinkled, brows knitted together. The blood sharply contrasted between the white of his hair, the dark ink of his sleeve, and the tan of his scarred skin. Sensing the faint flow of chi she gasped. He was unconscious and short, shallow breaths hardly counted as breathing, but he was alive. Frantically, May inked the five points of Alkahestry onto the concrete and shut his wounds.

Seconds ticked felt like hours until he stirred. She pressed her palms down lightly on his shoulders, “Don’t move, Mr. Scar.” Her voice sounded foreign to her as if her ears had been cotton-stuffed this entire time. “I’ve only managed to stop the bleeding, but we’ll need to get you to a- ” she froze “-a doctor,” she finished quietly, considering the suddenly short supply of medical professionals in the vicinity. She slumped, sitting on her feet and watching the man struggle with labored breath.

Scar grunted from the pressure she’d place on his forearm and Xiao May nudged her.

“S-sorry!” May’s palms fell back and she shook her head, trying to uproot herself from this daze. Slapping her cheeks, she refocused and spotted the bend in his chi where his arm was broken and she cursed her melancholy thoughts for not noticing earlier. She glanced around her for scraps of cloth to brace his fracture, selfishly unwilling to rip her own Xingese garb.

May searched for a cloth and realized the forgotten man behind her. She approached him with light footsteps, scrutinizing him. He had aged from the last time she saw him, as if he had been wrung of the life that sustained him. His arms were severed at the joint of his elbows. His white shirt textured by miniscule wrinkles from drying in the sun. A smile slightly curved his mouth. He died in peace, May figured, without any remorse or unspoken words. He died in battle and not for his love or his country or even in the uniform of the military he led. Just an ordinary man cut down at last by a survivor of the people he saw to extermination even with the power of a Philosopher’s stone.

The indignation crept back again, huffing at the cloth was about to rip and pilfer. She had it, she had immortality in her hands. She angrily ripped the cloth. The instructions were clear: Go.  Home. It wasn’t in her place to meddle with foreign affairs. She let the homunculus manipulate her. She could have been quarterway across the desert if she just had…

May sighed and Xiao May quirked. Truth be told, at the time, she didn’t know how taking back a dilapidated, mutant lizard would have helped her cause. She was already second guessing herself and Youswell was the right kind of excuse to help her find reason. Foreign affairs or not, she was already involved.

Roy Mustang stumbled over the girth of a pipe he couldn’t see. The woman May saved caught him by the arms. She watched them, him and his blonde companion; her face troubled with concerns and his, trying to reassure her. A satisfying warmth settled in her tummy knowing she did at least that succeeded in salvaging her life.

Distantly, a pool of blood darkened with the lapsed time. May managed to save her. She turned away from the red elixir when it was within her grasp once more and, for a second time, she let her prize slip from her fingers for the lives of others, for people who shared no blood relation - something so devastatingly important in Xing.

Perhaps it was the way he held her as if clinging on tighter to her body would keep her with him. Or how called out to her with a subtle break in his voice full worry and desperation. His white gloves stained vibrant red from her blood. It saturated her hair to her clothing to the hard surface underneath her. An unmistakable fear pierced through his features and she could still see his overwhelming relief when her breath was no longer ragged and her consciousness resurfaced.  He hugged the Lieutenant so tight May thought he would squeeze the remaining life out of her. The same thing happened in Youswell. She couldn’t help herself from saving others.

   
They had a moment when May glanced over. It felt like peeking into a private room. The Lieutenant looked exhausted. Her hand trembled, cupping his face. Her eyes looked like the small, white dishes back at home for deonjang, but her relief was as vibrant as refractions off a water’s surface. She pecked him on the lips, like older adults do to greet each other.   
   
“Lieutenant,” Colonel Mustang murmured.

Guilt befell the woman’s features, as if she was suddenly aware of the room. May refocused back to her task.  


A deep breath filled her lungs for recentering, but she subsequently took a step back when the hum of life flowing inside the Fuhrer triggered her senses. Her eyes narrowed, realizing the difference. She concentrated harder and cautiously dipped a hand into the dead man’s pocket.  

It was colder than she imagined. The vial reflected the brilliant color of red, brighter than oxidized blood and it flowed back and forth inside the glass with the tilt of her hand. The energy inside was standalone, detached from the flow. It was tiny and encapsulated by something so fragile, but she already knew it was far from it. A power so sinister and evil. She curved her fingers around it.

“May.”

The voice behind her sent a shock throughout the surface of her skin. May turned around and looked up. Alphonse stood, or rather was propped up, with his brother’s assist. The Amestrian military jacket he wore swallowed him, yet he still smiled at her - despite everything. It made her want to cry.

“So that’s Bradley, huh?” Ed commented on the man behind her. “Pretty smug way to go, don’t you think?”

“Brother…” Alphonse looked like he lacked the energy to even furrow his eyebrows together.

Ed didn’t answer to Alphonse’s reproach. “The plan is to head to the hospital as soon as possible. It’ll have the materials we need for now and then…” The pause spoke volumes to her, but the weight of it never crossed his face.  “Then, we can talk about our next plan of action.”

May nodded, curling her fingers tighter.

“Are you okay? Can you walk?”

She smiled at his absurd question, “Of course. You don’t need to worry about me - worry about yourself. You’re skin and bones.”

He beamed at her and it took her that much time to realize that the real Alphonse stood in front of her now, not an empty suit of armor. The heavy jacket bustled from a shrug, “I guess I am.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s get you to the hospital before you pass out from the blood rushing to your cheeks.” Ed turned them both, ending that conversation.

“Brother!”

May stood, brushing off the dust off her and preparing for her yelling fit of the hour. She stopped at the sight of Scar. “Wait a moment! I do need help with Scar.”

“He’s alive?” Their golden heads turned towards the Ishvalan.

“Yes, and I’ve managed to aid him with surface wounds and-”

“Hey, Mr. Gorilla!”

“Brother, please, I’m still not used to the loud sounds.”

“Sorry, Al. Can we get you to help us with something?”

She tucked away her secret inside the folds her of clothes. She heard the banter Ed initiated with the gorilla-fused chimera over the rustling behind her. Later on, she would wonder if she ignored it out of the grasp of normalcy she knew would not exist outside of the this crumbling room.

Before the chimera spoke, before his expression altered from adrenaline and twisted from animalistic instinct, the hairs at her neck stood  and her skin prickled from

“Little girl, look out!”

In hindsight, it was distance that made the difference. A little bit further and his blood wouldn’t have stained her face. A little bit closer and it would have been her life. Instead, the dead eyes of King Bradley haunted her as he lost what life she stole away. The kunai glinted sharply against the light, nestled cleanly at the center of his forehead.

She reacted. That’s all it was. May tried consoled herself, but the blood that smeared on her cheek denied her any comfort.

Bradley slumped sideways and the air suddenly felt suffocating and tense.

May jumped as a hand touched her shoulder. She lifted her head warily, trying to remember the moment her knees gave out.

The lieutenant lady looked at her, concerned. Colonel Mustang stared into the distance behind her and the alchemy teacher beside him. She stared at May worryingly too. She didn’t need to hear the words. The eyes of the others were on her too and it made her feel ill at ease.

“I’m okay! Everything is ok.” She freed the blade and the gurgling noise unsettled her imperceptibly. “It was just- it just happened so quick.”

The blonde didn’t say much. Her pale face stared and many noticed her injury would need tending to. Her hand let go after a gentle squeeze of affirmation and stood up.

May found her feet. She overhead the lieutenant relate information back with militaristic style, sparing no details. The alchemy teacher disappeared next to the Elrics and she spoke to no one in particular. “I’ll go on ahead to make sure no more surprises happen!” She heard the protests behind her, urging her to come back, but the walls of the room felt closer around her and the light suddenly seemed to darken.

Through the opening overhead, her feet landed softly onto what looked like courtyard Central’s military headquarters. Xiao May quivered from death decorating the a parade grounds, but it didn’t bother May It bothered her that it didn’t. She spent a few moments with Dr. Marcoh, silently wishing for his passing in peace.

She looked around the military compound. Headquarters at her back, strong walls surrounded her except for one. It was decimated by some catastrophic force, cleaning carving a hole into the streets of Central.

People frozen in time. Stopped in their daily lives as their spirits were severed and their souls escaped them.   
   
Her fingers wrapped around a tossed vial, feeling the impact of true emptiness. 


	2. Riza

Given the hour and spring in full swing, the coal stations had been burning with less intensity than they would in the winter and naturally, the lights went out. The hospital’s sublevel was dark with only small rectangular windows allowing passage for the natural light and a terrible humidity exacerbated by her lagging exhaustion. The sulfuric smell of diesel dissipated when she stowed away the fuel can away from the generator. Her fingers gripped the rip cord, foot inclined as a counterweight, and she yanked hard. Perhaps too much.

The generator sputtered and her vision blurred alongside a numbing vertigo causing her to stumble forward in the dark. Riza grimaced, catching her fall against the edges of the machine with an open palm. She rubbed her eyes on a clean, cotton sleeve and took a few deep breaths before she was clutching the starter once more.

May had inspected Riza’s wound as the others went off to secure adequate bedding and supplies for Alphonse. As instructed, Riza lied down on the floor marked with a star array she wasn’t familiar with. A worried Colonel sat next to her; a slight frown on his grimy face, biting the inside of his mouth and hands curled into bloodied fists. He made no attempt to mask it as he stared off into the middle ground with his clouded eyes. A flash of red had brought her attention back to the Xingese girl, and May gave her the all-clear in regards to the wound, but it was beyond her ability to restore the blood she had lost. It wasn’t an issue; she’d experienced worse.. The Colonel had looked unconvinced, yet he didn’t speak on the matter nor did he voice any opinion when she volunteered to search for the hospital’s generator. Not that she expected it for her sake, but Roy Mustang had an opinion for everything. His silence made her uneasy.

She tugged with controlled and measured force until the generator stirred, eventually humming to life after a black start. The lights flickered on overhead as a sigh of relief release escaped her.

The moment to wind down escaped her. In between the worry for his wellbeing, her acute anemia, the Elrics, and the general state of things, she was quietly eager at the prospect of sitting down, resting, or even the evasive luxury of sleeping. A pause to the insanity that had transpired. Maybe a short cat nap.

She was no stranger to the morbid sights of a battlefield.The fallen soldiers at Headquarters lulled her into a false sense of security gained through years of emotional compartmentalization. The number of Amestrian Blues and the white of Fort Briggs decreased with each passing step and the reality of the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire had tightened her injured throat.

She was unnerved by the passivity of the scene. Unlike the battlefield, there was no visible bloodshed or anguish. They were just there, as if in mid-slumber, capable of stirring at any moment. The stillness layered another blanket of chilling eeriness. No one said a word. There were no chirping birds despite the warm and vibrant weather, no feline rascallion rummaging for scraps in the alleyways, or any other indication that life existed beyond their party of ten. It was as if everyone agreed wordlessly to play along with this grisly game; the rules being “do not wake dead as they sleep.” She certainly seemed to think so, until the curiosity of one of the chimeras got the better of them.

“Is no one going to check?” He had said. The break in quietude was harsh and she involuntarily flinched at the disjunction from her thoughts. The Colonel had furrowed his brows. It was too early, too fresh a wound that heads would rather turn groundward than answer his question. Of course she wanted to check. Undoubtedly they all did, but doing so would give a finality to it all; the sealing nail to the Amestris’s coffin. The tall chimera Darius carried an unconscious Scar in his arms and spoke again, clearly aching for an answer, “Anybody?”

She had tried summon the strength stemming from her own curiosity, outstretching her foot towards the nearest civilian, but her stamina had been drained, mind swimming as a result. Instead of moving forward, she was close to toppling over, caught only by a quick foot to the concrete and the Colonel’s grip on her shoulder while he murmured to be careful..

Izumi approached a body near Riza. A male, middle-aged businessman wearing a suit and holding a matching briefcase. Riza watched as Izumi flipped the corpse carefully and searched for a pulse. The woman’s sigh was soft, but she gently lowered the hand back onto the ground. “No pulse,” she had announced to no one’s surprise..

Though it was a culmination of their worst fears, the hospital’s lobby had raised the bar, taking on a different atmosphere. A macabre sort that had dug through the thick of her skin and settled in the darkest crooks. The people in the receiving area, for one reason or another, weren’t distracted at the time of the eclipse. They weren’t given the mercy of not feeling their souls slip and it showed. Some clutched their necks as they tried to breathe, others slumped over their waiting chair, children clung to their mother’s skirts with a horrified look in their open eyes and tear-guttered cheeks, and couples holding one another. Death had fallen upon them indiscriminately.

Even as she ventured down to the scarcely lit basement, Riza had to maneuver carefully around maintenance workers that had tried to make sense of their last moments. A part of her wanted to pause and have a moment to breathe, to really breathe and unleash that clawing feeling in her chest akin to the invisible scars when they were fresh from Ishval. While she tried to rationalize that an anemic sniper had little power to make a difference against creatures such as the Homunculi, she still felt that inkling of guilt; the survivor guilt that had plagued her for many years after the war. Why her and not her fallen comrades. Why her and not the Ishvalan child.

She always shelved the thoughts, and it would remain there, collecting the proverbial dust along with other losses she was ready to deal with yet.

Riza stood still in the doorway of the boiler room. She was unprepared to deal with her gains either, if she could call them that. Her fingers curled into the wooden threshold, mouth thinning to a straight line with the fluttering of her heartbeat.

She had kissed him.

Unbidden, she cupped the face of her superior officer, gratuitously brought him closer to her face and, in no uncertain terms, saluted him with her lips instead of her hand in an unchecked wave of emotion.

She bit her lip, ruminating before the stairwell. While the military was effectively destroyed, the hope that something would blossom out of this graveyard felt downright insulting. Riza didn’t spend years of dedicating herself to the future of Amestris to throw it away in anticipation for something as capricious as love. Inarguably there was a mutual affection, but there was also respect: for the ones they lost, for him, and most importantly for herself. If the seedlings decided to sprout, she’d nurture them under more pertinent conditions, not during this crisis where she’d compromise her focus.

Distracted, the bottom of her military boot landed heavily on the wood flooring that lead into the hallway. It rung in the hollows of the area around her. The air shifted where she stood, one foot on the top step and the other on its predecessor. She felt like she was being held under an oppressive gaze, imperceptible save for the bloodthirst that saturated the air. Only a souvenir from her days under the watchful eyes of Pride and Wrath, she reasoned. However, her skin prickled, hairs standing at attention like cadets fresh out of the academy, and it sent a cold shiver down her spine, chilling each vertebrae in succession. Looming behind her, a ceiling bulb flickered. She saw her own shadow, still and statuesque, fade and return.

She blinked when another shadow emerged from underneath and blinked again to see it vanished. Swallowing thickly, she turned slowly on her heel. The staircase was empty. The staircase was empty.

Her eyes widened slightly, and Riza composed herself, urgently, denying her emotions any more liberties. She couldn’t catalogue details as well as Falman’s with his encyclopedic memory, nor did she form conclusions as quickly as Breda. Despite that, she knew the count of the corpses she’d come across, on the stairs and in the halls, was frightfully and significantly less.

Something clattered and the noise bounced off the walls, shaking her bones. Riza crouched and flattened herself as much as the railing would let her. It sounded thin and long, like a broomstick. She glanced around the corner where the rattling came from. The shadows didn’t move and the sounds swayed to silence. Riza straightened herself, stifling her nerve.

Rounding the corner, her feet moved one in front of the other, her hip perpendicular to the cream-colored wall. Instantaneous regret burned like bile at the back of her throat when she reached for firearm in a holster that wasn’t there. She’d left behind the one she pilfered off an officer under the assumption she wouldn’t need one.

“Hello?”

Her flesh jumped and muscles stiffened. Her even breath morhped into a long exhale. She faced the other end of the corridor, releasing the tension in her shoulders and stepping out normally.

“Lieutenant Hawkeye?” the teenager’s voice carried around the corner, and Edward followed soon after, donning a different set of clothes. “There you are! The Colonel has been nagging me to go find.. Are you all right?”

Her throat knotted, she nodded.

”You’re as white as that blouse you’re wearing.” He stepped in a little closer. “And you’re sweating bullets.”

She blinked. Her fingers touched her scrunched brow and brought them into sight, thumbing the moisture refracting from the light. “Yes, I’m fine.”

He subtly raised an eyebrow suggesting he didn’t believe her.

“Trust me, Edward. I thought I saw or-or heard something. A symptom of fatigue, I’m sure.”

The alchemist frowned and his boyish features hardened. “It’s been a long day. May told me you lost a lot of blood, and it hasn’t been more than a few hours since then.”

“I won’t deny it, I overestimated my overall constitution.” Riza managed a reassuring smile. “Perhaps I should have had more sustenance.”

Edward continued to stare. His stubborn concern was endearing, but the scrutiny was unwelcome, and the diminishing adrenaline left her light-headed and weakened muscles sore.

Eager to abandon the subject, Riza added, “You mentioned the Colonel..?”

“Right,” Ed trailed off his sentence with his lingering skepticism. He eventually relented when her expression became stern and gestured behind him, inviting her to follow him. “We’ve settled in a wing on the other side of this hospital.” They walked in tandem and his face flashed with the light from the passing windows. “I didn’t know this place was so big.”

“Central is-was the largest city in Amestris and housed the bulk of the country’s soldiers.” They fell silent and she knew why, but at current, she didn’t want to remain in silence. “Were the chimeras able to procure canned goods or other foods?”

“Yeah, they found the hospital kitchen and brought food to the wing we’re staying in.”

“How are the others faring?”

The boy sucked in breath, “Everyone is better than we thought-” his golden eyebrows raised “- surprisingly. A few cuts here and there. Even Scar is up and walking around. May told him he was just exhausted. I mean, even I thought he looked like hell. Mustang’s palms were fucked up, but May patched him up and -- well, you know, there’s not much we can do with the Colonel’s sight short of a philosopher's stone. Jerso sustained a direct hit from Pride.“

She snorted softly at the resemblance Ed didn’t see between himself and their superior officer, and how he expertly avoided the actual question. “How is Alphonse?”

His mouth curved into a sad smile. “He’s fine. He just needs to get some meat on those bones. Through these doors Lieutenant,” He instructed and latterly pointed. “Teacher hooked him up to an IV.

“There was never a day I didn’t think about this - when and how he would return to flesh. We always considered different possibilities and at one point, I thought I was prepared to see him like this and-and be ready to do what would be necessary for him -” he paused, holding the door open for her, showing newfound interest in the slits between the boards of rich brown wood under his feet. He shook his head slowly, “But not like this.”

Edward’s eyes darted up to her, surprised when her hand landed on his shoulder. “He’ll get through this. You’ll get through this. It’ll just take time.”

She didn’t stay to watch him nod silently to empty words, noting the bodies laid to rest outside of the thick doors. Watching for movement.

Riza walked by a glinting sign that read “Intensive Care Unit”; the wing was sizable and clean compared to the stuffy basement below. It faced the front of the building with windows lining the corridor that overlooked Central’s one of many residential areas. Several rooms wrapped a corner around an open space that housed the nurse’s station. She’d been through this hall a couple of times with its light maple half-panelling and windows that brightened the entire ward.

They turned into the corner room where Alphonse lied in a bed flashing a beleaguered smile at their return. A tube was attached to his arm leading to clear bag of saline stand next to his bed. May sat diligently by his side. The Colonel sat opposite them on the waiting benches that belonged outside that room, Izumi sitting next to him. All three chimeras took places next to the windows, casting unnervingly long shadows into the room, and a bandaged Scar was seated rigidly in a lone corner.

It was a meeting of sorts; she wouldn’t put past a man of rank to take charge. She took her place at his right. “I’m back, sir.”

His knitted brows loosened a little at her voice. “I have full confidence you’ve made the place that much brighter, Lieutenant.”

He didn’t have the slightest clue how quickly her face fell.

“Is that all of us?”

“Yes, sir,” she answered quickly, out of custom if not out of jitteriness.

“In spite of appearances, I’m aware of the situation we’re in… We’ve suffered a cataclysmic defeat today. Undoubtedly, everyone in this room has lost someone dear to them as sacrifice for the national transmutation circle. I imagine it will be difficult, but I have to urge you to move on.”

Riza glanced over to him, but it was Edward that voiced her quieted thoughts. “Are you that heartless? The bodies are still warm.”

“Just because we managed to survive the homunculus doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods, Fullmetal.”

“What are you saying,” asked the tallest of the trio. Zampano unraveled his arms, “You think that thing is coming back?”

“I don’t think we’ll stand a chance this time. You saw those parade grounds. The Xingese brat -- Greedling, was it? -- tried to fight it and he was sizzled worse than bacon on a pan,” Darius looked to a bandaged Jerso to his left. “No offense.”

“I’m a boar, not a pig.”

Scar grunted, “Will you shut up and let him finish?”

“It’s not a secret that Amestris was constantly involved in skirmishes and wars. Always in battle and now we know why. We have enemies as a result, enemies that are constantly watching the fronts and I can assure you they will notice the downed soldiers including the radio silence. The Aerugonians and especially the Cretians will not hesitate to advance forward as a result if they have not already.

“It will take three days for the either force to reach Central barring any detours.”

“Why? Why would that mean anything for us?” Alphonse raised the question curiously.

“One of two things can happen “ - Mustang shrugged- “or both will-”

He held the room through his pause and she was unsure if it was for theatrics or not.

“After these armies cross through leagues and leagues of corpses and arrive in Central where an inner struggle is all but evident, you tell me if you wouldn’t find any survivors within in the least bit culpable.”

They were held in silence as it sunk in and the room was suddenly filled with protest. The Colonel raised a hand to stop them. Edward didn’t care.

“You can’t be serious. Just because they were enemies of the Amestrian military doesn’t mean they’ll hunt down a random group of people.”

“Perhaps not the Aerugonians. They are more diplomatic outside of wars. It would be an multinational matter with foreign laws that none of us are privy to.

“Back then, there were talks that the Aerugonians tried to assist the Ishvalan War of Extermination. The higher ups assumed it was to tire the Amestrian Army in their war, despite the multiple, successful fronts. Others believed that they were trying to interject in the inhumane nature of the war. In retrospect, this seems more likely given the direction their recent monarchs have taken.”

Riza’s fist tightened behind her.

“Then we’ll hide,” May looked around the room for reassurance in her suggestion. “They can’t search all the buildings.”

Mustang leant back into his seat, crossing his arms. “The second scenario involves both armies becoming aware of each other’s presence. The Cretans are an aggressive sort, second only to the Drachmans -- luckily, they’ll be busy taking down Fort Briggs for months. They’ve been known to be ruthless in the Western Front and too reckless a military to have a stable relationship with any of its allies.

“Battalions will become regiments, and regiments will become divisions when armies send scouts and inevitably realize their positions. The goal will be to reach Central first for the militaristic advantage. Untouched resources observed along the way mean that Central’s massive supply of military supplies, weapons, and anything else the Research and Development department was working on will be up for the taking. For both of them, that’s worth the bloodshed and they’ll be bringing more force with them ever seen on Amestrian soil. ”

The tension surfaced in their faces, the wringing of their hands, and from their stillness as they all digested what was left unsaid.

Central would become a battleground again.


	3. Scar

Silence dampened the survivors’ mood like a cold sweat.They fixed their gazes to the floor knowing their weariness would not be relieved any time soon.

Except for Roy Mustang; he stared into the distance with narrowed eyes.  
Scar found it difficult to quantify Mustang’s augury. Each time the Flame Alchemist appeared he was a different man. shedding who he was before, molting like a Kingsnake. He had witnessed the haughty, overconfident military officer so secure in his ability and his ghost, back in the tunnels, moments away from losing himself. He had read in the newspapers of Maria Ross, and had wondered what kind of arrogant soul subverts their own system to coldly burn a woman beyond recognition. Scar had felt the heat of Mustang’s legendary flames when he incinerated the mannequin soldiers with controlled unrelenting power. The tales he had heard of one of the most prolific killers in the massacre did not represent the man who held his subordinate with inordinate concern. Scar’s skepticism was not without warrant and he wasn’t alone.

“This is a joke, right?” He unraveled his arms, looking at his chimera brethren for reassurance and finding none. “Everyone’s soul just got sucked into this ...this **thing** and now you want me to believe there’s war coming?”

“Whoa whoa wait, Mr Gorius - let me,” Edward Elric turned, cocksure, “how the hell are you so sure about this?

“Ed,” the teacher admonished.

“No, I’m serious. What’s the big idea? If they arrived, why does it have to be war? Can’t we - you know - talk?”

Mustang frowned in Edward Elric’s direction. “Yes, we can. But we risk putting ourselves in more danger that way.”

“How?” Edward Elric looked around the room. “None of us have the military uniform. We aren’t armed -- Most of us anyway.”

“Don’t be blinded by your naivete, Fullmetal.”

“Was that a blind joke?” he quickly intercepted.

Ignoring him, Mustang pressed on, “Think about it. Their first assumptions of us won’t be of innocent passerby that happened to have survive a strange phenomenon--”

Like a child, the young alchemist interrupted, “But _why **not**_?”

“Fullmetal,” Scar watched Mustang take a deep breath; one to maintain temperance, to be sure. “On many things, I appreciate your insight as you and your brother have prodigious abilities in alchemy and most sciences. However, I wouldn’t trust your military intelligence expertise as far as I could throw you.

“Under my watch, I made damn sure you did not see the front lines of war. These are organized coercive forces, one of which will not pause because we have women and children. Our neighbors aren’t well-versed in alchemy, if they have any true grasp of it at all. Their foundation wasn’t forged from it. They’ll think we’re spies or, at the very least, assume we’re all alchemists -- they have every reason to assume hostiles on sight.”

The elder Elric sat back down on the hospital bed, the spring creaked and filled the void.

“I can tell from your silence that you don’t believe me.” His patience was wearing thin, Scar noticed. “I’m not asking your to believe me; I am telling you.”

“How are you so certain?” The Curtis woman asked him with a softer and more understanding tone than the accusatory ones Roy Mustang received earlier. “You have to let the layman understand. We don’t automatically jump from national catastrophe to war between foreign countries.”

The scowl that was on the Colonel’s face softened. “I would love to give a simpler understanding; believe me, Mrs. Curtis. It’s a matter of amassing military experiences and strategies over a decade. Despite what some of you may think, I didn’t get to Colonel on just good looks.”

“Jury’s still out for that.”

While Edward Elric’s joke earned him glares, Scar turned inward. He couldn’t deny Mustang’s tenure in the Military. The Amestrians implemented tactical finesse and organizational prowess on top of their overwhelming forces. The Ishvalans relied heavily on guerilla warfare: hiding behind dunes, rigging the roads with homemade explosives, and raining gunfire from crests of valleys. His time training in the vaulted temples showed him the way the desert people fought. Before the Amestrian assault, their occupation was limited to dealing with brigands or deserters looking to pillage wreaking havoc in a district or two before attempting to disappear into the perilous desert. But it was tacticians they lacked. That, along with the lack of alchemical warfare, resulted in the darkest times of his life and for his people.

He didn’t expect Ishvala to answer his prayers like this, he thought grimly. Ishvala forgive us.

“Oh yeah, this entire time… back in headquarters.” Darius interrupted Scar’s musings. He was so engrossed in his thoughts that Scar didn’t noticed the hostility that seeped in through the walls. Nudging those at his sides, he continued with a subtle barb to his words. “That’s right. The Flame Alchemist, Colonel Roy Mustang? I didn’t forget.”

“Uh.” Mustang’s mouth hung slightly ajar, confused by the sudden declaration. “You’re going to have to excuse me if I don’t immediately recognize you.”

“I remember too.” The shortest one Jerso nodded and further explained, “We were in the military before we were turned into science experiments. Central HQ was so busy the day you transferred from the East with your retinue.”

“The Hero of Ishval -- really awful stuff you did out there.”

“Get to the point,” he mutteed.

“Forgive us if we’re a bit...cautious of the alchemist with such a high rank within the military.” Darius said to Edward Elric. “The womanizing one. And really, really ambitious. Highly destructive too.”

“Are you finished?”

“How do we know you’re not just like Kimblee? Tossing us out as soon as you’re done making sure you’re safe.”

“He might be a bastard, but he is no Kimblee.”

“Is that so?” He directed his gaze to Lieutenant Hawkeye. “Say, how did you get that nasty cut on your neck?”

Her palm quickly met her bandaged neck.

“That’s enough.” He stood abruptly and would have toppled forward if not for Lieutenant Hawkeye’s quick hand to his shoulder. Straightening himself, he said, “I’ve said what I needed to say and there’s no obligation to stay with this group if you desire to leave. Lieutenant. Fullmetal.”

“Sir.”

“What is it?”

“We’ll need to gather sufficient supplies to transport Alphonse. Perhaps we can do so with an ambulance. Lieutenant, we’ll need to get you some firearms.”

Scar noticed May’s eyes staring at him - almost pleading. He nodded at her and she spoke up, “If we stay, where will we go?”

“East.” Edward Elric and the Colonel Mustang said in unison.

“If they’re coming from the South and the West, it only makes sense,” The small alchemist said before Mustang could explain.

“There’s a military hospital 20 miles East of Central. Far away enough to avoid the crossfire.”

One of the chimeras grunted.

“To stay here within Central is assured death. You have three days to decide,” Mustang said emphatically

The silence that settled this time felt more at ease. Pensive, not hair-raising, but still agitated with lack of options.

“What will we do until then?”

“Gather supplies and munitions. We should probably travel in pairs, in the event I’ve miscalculated and their advance moves faster than I anticipated.” He sat back languidly.

“I have one matter left to attend to in Central and that is to bury my husband.”

“Teacher-”

“I’ll join ya,” Darius walked with Izumi as she exited and passed a glance at Mustang that he missed. “This hospital already seems too cramped.”

”We’d like to go the radio station where our comrades were last seen and stop by the military’s armory on the way back.” Lieutenant Hawkeye relayed in typical militaristic fashion. “We would likely need someone else to join us.”

“I’ll go.” Scar gripped the upholstered armchairs to stand. A flash of indiscernible emotion flashed through the sniper’s eyes before it disappeared.

May bounded over to him as Scar spoke, and stopped mid-stride. “Mr. Scar,” May spoke in low tones, “but you’ve only just healed.”

He didn’t say anything, only acknowledging her with a stare.

“Then I’ll come-” May stopped and hesitated with the rest of her sentence - the panda cat mirroring her emphatic gestures. She stole quick glances to the bed where Alphonse Elric spoke with a concerned Edward Elric.

“No, stay here.”

“But I wanted to talk in private - about Xing and... something else.”

“It can wait,” he said, watching the pair leave.

“When you get back then…” he thought he heard her say, but he followed Mustang and Hawkeye before May started to answer.

“You’re a lifesaver,” he heard Mustang tell her.

“Scar,” she greeted instead of replying and Mustang perked.

“Thanks for joining us Scar.”

“Are you certain you’re up for this?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t have offered otherwise.”

She thinned her lip, nodding her head in silent acquiescence.

“We’re going to the radio station to find our comrades and then detour to the military armory that is on the way back.”

“Where’s the armory?”

“Halfway through the city. I’ll commandeer a vehicle to get there and back.”

* * *

  
The clouds drifted in front of a late afternoon sun when they reached the radio station.

Car doors closed - his and then another. Lieutenant Hawkeye went to help Colonel Mustang despite the newfound independence from his walking stick. Scar used that moment to glance at the streets. It was the industrial side of Central, but surprisingly vacant compared to the amount of people on the sidewalks he saw on the way there. Lieutenant Hawkeye swerved through wrecked cars that had lost their operator mid journey. Some had caught on fire and were still smoking and smoldering.

In response to this, Mustang had wondered aloud how many people had actually left their stove on. Many people told the Ishavalan he was a severe type, but even he recognized the joke and thought that it was insensitive to make one in light of this situation. To his surprise, Hawkeye had frowned and asked if he was thinking about the gas trapped inside the buildings.

Scar turned back to the two storey building; the orange tinge somehow seemed ominous bouncing off the darkened windows. The inside proved to be just as dark. Amestrians favored sealed, closed spaces allowing sunlight to venture in through their own mean, in comparison to the open windowed architecture of Ishval. During his time in exile, Scar never got to properly venture into an Amestrian home - always on the run, in alleyways, or abandoned places -- hiding amongst the shadows.dusty from the settling of the air, not from moving grains of sand.

He climbed up the stairs where the Lieutenant had already started moving bodies.

There were already beads of sweat glistening on her forehead and her face looked haunted, white as monk robes. Her hands slid down her face before she noticed Scar standing in the room and quickly composed herself. ”They’re not here, sir.” Her eyes looked at Mustang as she spoke, glancing at in Scar’s direction briefly, and he noticed her fear. He wasn’t sure why, but she was shaken by whatever her findings were.

Mustang shifted his position to the sound of her words. “What do you mean?”

The sniper stood from her crouch, raking a hand through her loose blond hair. He noticed her mouth trembled despite her efforts. “You said they would be in the radio station building. They escorted the First Lady to radio station, correct?”

His brows narrowed, “Of course, that was the plan.”

Lieutenant Hawkeye cleared her throat. “At present, the employees of the radio station are here, Mrs. Bradley is here, Maria Ross and even Brosh. But Breda, Fuery, and Catalina are not.”

Maria Ross rung in his ear for a moment, unsure if he heard right as he recognized the flicker of hope that dashed across Mustang’s greyed eyes; his subordinate’s told a different story. “Are you saying they could be alive?”

She switched looks from one corpse to the other, “I’m-I’m not sure I-”

Curious, he peered at the corner she was slowly approaching, dipping down to the green-carpeted floor.

She straightened to a stand without a word.

Quick to catch on, Mustang asked, “What is it, Lieutenant?”

A moment passed before she turned on her feet, “It’s Hayate.” She cradled a medium-sized dog with a black coat and white paws. It’s small eyes were closed, its chest didn’t lift and its paws didn’t twitch.

Canines were a rarity in Ishval and his purpose in the desert disallowed him the luxury of domesticated animals. If anything the only other time the Ishvalan saw sadness like this for an animal was May’s tearful concern during the disappearance of Xiao May.

The woman petted the dog’s chin and ruffled his ears, her neck looked strained with the tendons appearing like cable cords underneath the thin skin. He may not have heard it, but she inhaled quick like she suppressed an emotional exhale at his expense. She appeared tense and immediately noticed when Mustang tried to approach. “No, don’t,” she warned.

He affirmed her with a nod when she looked over. He watched her guide the colonel back down the stairs, well-trained in schooling her expressions, and carrying the dog in her arms.

The Colonel stood by the rear doorway of the broadcasting building and Scar purposely made his feet sound louder. The dark-haired man turned his head in acknowledgement, “Hawkeye said she’ll only take a moment.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“I remember when Fuery brought in the pup. It was during a downpour in East City and he was trying to find a home for the dog out of the goodness of his heart, unable to just leave it out for nature to take its course.”

He looked at Mustang curiously.

“Breda was allergic, Falman said he’d read up on dogs and would rather get attached to the temperament of a labrador than a Shiba Inu.” He smiled into the distance as the memories, Scar assumed, replayed in his mind’s eye. “Havoc said he’d take him if only to eat him. She snatched him from Fuery’s hands with conviction and named him then and there.

“‘Black Hayate.’ We told her that that was just as bad as eating the thing. He was her companion and he couldn’t love her more. Fiercely loyal.” Mustang looked down, kicking his feet like an embarrassed child over the doorplate. “I hope you’re not standing there so I can pretend I was talking to myself.”

He almost chuckled, but it turned into breath escaping quickly through his nose. “I’ve learned it's not an unusual thing for an attachment like this to happen. May is very close to her pet panda cat.”

“I only wish we met under different circumstances.”

“Those are regrets for a different world.”

He only saw Hawkeye moving her arms, kneeling atop the grass with the orange backdrop of the sky decorated with some pointed trees.

She met with them at the doorway. The borders of her eyes were red, matching the pert tip of her nose. Her schooled expression broke for a moment with the corner of her lip twitching upwards in the way mourners did.

Before Scar could hear the break in her voice, he was interrupted by the scraping noise of a chair haphazardly scraping across the wood floor. He followed the noise across the ceiling.

They climbed to the top floor as briskly as they could with narrow walkways and tight doors and back into the station’s microphone room. A woman in pink was standing in the middle of the room with slanted shoulders and favoring her right leg.

Something wasn’t right. He felt it in the thick of his bones, rattling in the space where vestiges of his faith lied.

“Mrs. Bradley?” Hawkeye said, confused as the First Lady began to turn. “She was on the floor, she had no pulse. You heard me, right?”  
  
Something wasn’t right. He examined the slow moving body. Her eyes were blank, her mouth hung slack jawed and her arms limp, a posture unbecoming for the wife of a dignified leader.   

“Mrs. Bradley?” She called again and began to step forward.

Scar blocked her with an arm and shot a cautionary glare, “I wouldn’t.”  
  
The old woman’s eyes switched between him and her, swaying arms like pendulums. “D-Dear…?”  
  
Up until then the Colonel was silent beside her, observing without his eyes. “Do you hear... growling?”  
  
“No sir, no one is--” Hawkeye slowly mumbled to him, unable to tear her eyes away.  
  
The First Lady’s slack jawed mouth tightened and opened at the same time as she lunged towards Lieutenant Hawkeye. Without a moment to react she took a step back, and the elderly woman crashed into her hard enough to tackle her to the ground.

Seconds felt like hours as he watched, frozen from the sight as the so called Mrs. Bradley tried to bite the face of the Lieutenant. She held her back only by a hand to her forehead as it chomped down on its own teeth like a feral animal.

Getting control back of his wits, Scar seized it by the scruff of the collar and pushed it away harder than he intended to from her light weight. He helped the Lieutenant up.

“What’s happening?”

“Give me a moment, sir. The threat isn’t over.”

He kept watch on Mrs. Bradley and he heard the sniper pull out her pistol.  
  
It danced in front of him, swaying. The eyes weren’t right, everything about it moved inhumanly. It growled again and lunged towards him. He heard the Lieutenant bark, “Get back!”; but with only a moment’s time to react, blue light filled his vision and Scar’s tattooed arm extended out in front of her. Blood painted the floor underneath her as it shot out of Mrs. Bradley’s ears and eyes as if she were crying blood. Her mouth remained eerily opened as she plummeted to the floor.  
  
She exchanged glances with him as she clutched Mustang closer after tucking away her firearm. “The previously presumed dead Mrs. Bradley attacked me.”  
  
“She attacked?” Mustang parroted.  
  
As if she felt the same chill Scar did, she continued, “Yes and we need to leave.”  
  
The rest of the corpses seemed to twitch and he wasn’t entirely sure if it was his imagination or not. He chose to err on the side of caution instead of waiting to find out with the pair following behind him.

Sunset burned across the horizon as they exited. He was beginning to think this day would never end.

He hated to admit that his nerves were frayed. He could feel the blood drained from his face, the cold that suddenly set in a warm, spring evening. Scar marched ahead as Hawkeye struggled guiding Mustang back with haste and without him tripping.

Central Headquarters loomed above the tops of buildings; the epicenter of it all.  
  
“What do you suppose that was?” Hawkeye asked Scar, finally reaching the bottom step.  
  
His lip thinned, pushing the dread down his throat. “Of our teachings from Ishvala, a body rising from the dead is a horrible omen. One of the worst. If what you said is true and that woman was truly dead, then there is an inexplicable evil behind this.”  
  
He stopped suddenly, spotting it first. A man outfitted in the Amestrian military uniform limped across the street, dragging his bleeding leg behind him. “He shouldn’t be able to walk...” But it didn’t seem to bother it. They froze where they stood. Scar hoped it wouldn’t notice them.  
   
“Why did we stop?” The naive question broke the aching silence.

Scar glanced at the Colonel, forgetting once more about his blindness.    
  
The thing turned and he realized it was armless. It noticed them immediately and in its stillness, it looked up to the bleeding sky and released a shrill cry so animalistic and raw that he covered his ears. He looked up and it hadn’t moved from its spot, but his heart was pounding as the adrenaline rushed through his veins.

He was about to accept that nothing had happened, but suddenly behind him, bodies began to emerge from the crevices between buildings, from homes and shops and flooded the streets.

Hawkeye pushed Mustang into the car and instructed him to get in at once.  
  
“What was that?” He asked, rubbing a bump on his head.

  
“The dead,” Hawkeye answered gravely, buckling in her safety belt. “The dead are rising.”  
  
“The dead? What do you mean the dead?”

She didn’t answer him; she appeared to focus on trying not to hit the people that had tried to get close to the vehicle. More and more people walked towards them as they passed each row of streets.

“Lieutenant Hawkeye!”

Lieutenant Hawkeye slammed the brakes and Scar almost left his face printed on the back of Mustang’s seat. “They’ve surrounded us.”

All at once, the sacrificed started tapping at the windows with their hands, demanding entry to their haven. Was this it - Is this Ishvala’s fitting punishment?

“I can’t move forward, there’s too many of them.” Hawkeye announced and, without her knowing, gave him his answer. “Scar! Can you make a pathway?”

“Through them?”

A crackling noise came from the driver’s side of the window. A man, groaning loudly, had picked up a rock and began tapping it against Hawkeye’s glass screen. “Scar, can you or not? Do it from your side. Straight down this road will lead us back to the hospital. Take the Colonel with you please.” The tapping was getting more insistent and the tip of the rock had pierced through.

“I’m not leaving you behind.” Mustang said soonafter.  
  
He nodded to Hawkeye’s instructions and forcefully swung open the car door, knowing a handful of sacrifices back. He used his right arm to sunder the road for a short escape. He ripped Mustang out of his seat by his arm.

“We have to go back - or at least wait for her!”

“You heard her. These things are dangerous and we have to get moving.” Scar tightened his grip as the Colonel tried to free himself.

“Lieutenant!” He called out and it turned the heads of the sacrifices that were in a stupor. “Ri-!”

“I’m right here, sir.”

“Don’t _do_ that.”

Scar let go of his arm, but their little pause had encumbered them, placing them in a worse situation than being trapped in a car.  
  
“I don’t think these things are friendly or patient,” She muttered sardonically.

Scar searched for an opening, calculating an exit strategy. The blockade of bodies made that almost impossible for all three of them. In the back of his mind, a quiet, meek voice recited a prayer to Ishvala for his safety and the safety of those still living.  
  
“Lieutenant,” Mustang beckoned. He pulled a glove from his pocket and slipped it through in his fingers.

Scar watched dubiously, brows cinching together in concern.

“Sir?” Hawkeye responded, glancing at the overwhelming number of sacrifices.  
  
“Be my eyes.”  
  
“Yes, sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am least proud of this chapter since I haven't written as Scar ...ever. :'D also , idk why the thing from the first chapter notes keeps popping up. That's a little annoying.


	4. Edward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternatively titled: Here we go.

  _“It didn’t work.”_

_Edward listened as the older man spoke with a grim timbre. It was low, and Ed was surprised he could even make out the words. The sun beginning to seep into the dark chamber with the end of the eclipse distracted him further._   
  
_A clunk of metal armor colliding with the concrete ground sounded behind him. He felt the world spin as the fight between Greedling and Pride intensified in the background. That Father asshole watched from on high, like a sick kid who watches ants squirm under a magnifying glass on a sunny day._

_“What didn’t work?” He asked desperately as he ran to Alphonse, May came out of nowhere next to him. “Al?”_

_“Alphonse!” May squeaked._   
  
_“The counter to his transmutation circle. I calculated it for so long and it didn’t work...” There was a pause and the tension could be felt in Ed’s chest._   
  
_“But I can use alchemy; they fixed it!”_   
  
_“No, not that one.” He dropped on his knees next to the suit of armor. “The one for everyone’s soul, the reason I left you and Alphonse and Trisha... If I had known, I would have never stepped outside of Resembool.”_

_The din of battle grew between Father leaving through the hole, Greedling shouting and chasing after him, and the thunderous beat within his own chest. He watched Pride’s vessel disintegrate into dust._   
  
_“You’re-you’re joking, right? How is … everyone gone? Why isn’t Alphonse waking up?”_   
  
_“What’s going on?” Ed heard the blind Colonel speak finally. He glanced over and Teacher’s clutch over his arm tightened without a word._

_His head snapped back to Hohenheim when his father’s hand firmly gripped his shoulder._  
   
 _“Edward, listen to me carefully -- if only this one time. You will need to take him to a hospital, closest one you can find. IV bags are important. Don’t transport him unless necessary. He won’t be able to eat for a while. He will need a lot of rest. Please leave the country as soon as he is able.”_  
   
“What are you going to do?” He panicked.

 _Hohenheim opened Al’s front armor plate and a powerful gust flung it across the room. It came from Greedling…_ Ling _crashing into a corner of the chamber. Charred and not regenerating._

_Hohenheim wasn’t bothered to look._

_“We said we’d never use- Don’t toss me your notes, pops! Hey! If we can defeat the homunculus, we can get them back!”_  
   
 _“It’s too late.” He looked up to the light trickling in with tired eyes.”I won’t live through this again.”_  
  
 _Ed heard the crackling from the transmutation, and saw the red electricity flash before him. He yelled after him, “Don’t abandon us again, you lousy father!”_

* * *

 

Edward cursed Hohenheim. Cursed alchemy. Cursed it all. His shit luck. The figurative shit hand he had been dealt.

He had brief moments where it felt like a dream; a haze that clouded his mind. He hadn’t slept all day, not that he was complaining. His bones were beginning to ache. He didn’t have to look in a mirror to see the bags under his eyes. He sat upright to settle restless legs.

If there was any silver lining to this -- and Ed tried so hard to hold on to it -- it was that they had regained his body back. But it caused inner conflict. In the few hours since, he made an effort to always be by Al, because left alone his mind would wander in the worst ways, and the thoughts that gathered would make his stumps ache. He had felt the cost was too high. He rationally knew it was Hohenheim who paid the toll, yet Ed felt that the gain of his younger brother’s body was not worth the price of losing all the people of Amestris. A swirl of self-loathing would always brew uncomfortably whenever he dwelled on this. Ungrateful, undeserving, even arrogant. The fact that his brain sputtered out of ideas only sunk his heart further and left a putrid taste in his mouth.

Fortunately, all dark clouds would dissipate upon seeing Alphonse. Even amongst the death and desolation, Ed had smiled when he saw the flesh body of his younger brother, and he felt the warmth as Alphonse murmured Brother without a metallic sound to his voice.

Alphonse slept and Ed watched. His cheeks sunken in, brittle hair cut short, and bony throughout.  Al had a severe look on his face as he slept; maybe it was just the hollows of his face creating the expression. He was so small. The outline under the blanket silhouetted a human with straight  lines and hard edges -- lacking curves of healthy muscle. He was here and resting.  
   
May slumbered next to the hospital bed in a wide, cushioned chair; resting her head on its arms. As much as she annoyed him, May pulled through for him where Hohenheim's instructions fell short. He had her to thank for the healthy flush on Al’s bony cheeks.  
   
The first few hours were rough. His body didn’t react well to anything, and Ed’s inexperience had shown through. Al had asked for water and like the idiot that he was, Ed had given it to him. He regurgitated it violently and the sight made Ed feel like he was going to break in half from heaving.  
   
May had scolded him when she reentered the room and instructed him to clean up the sick as she brought in the IV stand and the bags full of saline. He watched as she took better care of his brother than he could.  
   
Ed stood and looked out the window. The eerie presence of bodies was less on this avenue of Central. He immediately turned away, opening and closing the palm of his automail right hand. He supposed it wouldn’t be a bad thing to keep his automail if it meant Alphonse walked around. He sighed, tracing his fingers along the edges and frame of his automail.  
   
_Winry._  
   
In every likely scenario, she was mostly likely swallowed in the nationwide transmutation circle. He knew it. It was logical. But every other part that didn’t adhere to logic wished, hoped, and in a desperate corner of his grieving mind, he nearly prayed for her safety, that maybe she did leave Amestris on his advice, but he wouldn’t know unless they went to Resembool. Given Al’s current condition, he couldn’t anticipate when that would be possible.  
   
“How is he?”  
   
Ed turned in response to the low voice. “Fine,” he whispered. “Just sleeping.”

Teacher leaned on the doorway; a small smile on her lips and arms wrapped around herself. He gestured for her to follow him outside the room. Ed could tell there was a change in her eyes. Somehow, she lost the trademark ferocity that burned behind them.  
   
“Perhaps you should too, it’s been a long day.”  
   
“Maybe when everyone else gets back.” He rolled shoulder. “Did the chimeras help you find Mr. Sig?”  
   
“We did. He was at the bottom of the staircase before they pulled me in, next to the General Armstrong and her brother. We gave them a burial too.”

He could almost hear her heart breaking. He bit his cheek, looked down at his feet and told her sheepishly, “I’m sorry we failed him, Teacher.”  
   
“Ed...” She pulled him into a hug before he could protest. He soon realized the hug was for her and not particularly for him. “We’ve all lost someone today.”  
   
He stepped away. “That doesn’t make my sympathy any less meaningful.”  
   
“Thank you, Ed.” He felt her hand shift towards her face, suppressing a sniffle before she let him go. “Any word from the others?”  
   
From where he stood, the sky lit up in a spectacle of smoke and explosion. The flames had blended in so well with the sky that he almost missed it. His eyes widened and his feet took him to the nearest window. “That’s the Colonel’s alchemy.”  
   
He felt her pace up beside him. “Are you certain?”  
   
“Positive.” He stared as the smoke dispersed into the atmosphere. “I’ll go and check it out.” He slowly shut Alphonse’s door and began to sprint towards the double doors as they swung in front him, inches away of wiping his face clean.  
   
The door were forced open by Jerso writhing against something. “Get them- off me please- Zampano-! Augh! they got my ear!”  
   
Ed, naturally confused, saw the other bodies come into view. Moving bodies in scrubs and lab coats. But their movements were off, feral and jerking; yet their limbs hung as if their hands were too heavy to lift. And the one on Jerso. A child. Clinging to his face, scratching and biting at his face  
   
“Edward!”  
   
Teacher’s voice brought him back and he bolted to help the chimera get the body off him. He saw Izumi run towards another body making its way towards Alphonse’s room and flung it towards the crowd of moving bodies in the other wing.  
   
He reached for the child ripping the skin on Jerso’s face and before Ed could touch it, the child’s head turned and hissed at him, vaulting from the chimera’s face toward the ceiling.It clung to the surface and crawled like an insect with rapid movement back into the crowd in the other room. The horror of the sight briefly paralyzed him.  

Gorius clutches his shaking friend, “Jerso! Where’s Zampano?”  
   
The chimera held his face in agony, blood quickly showing between his fingers. “Z-Zampano, he was overwhelmed.”  He heard Izumi hastily shut the door double doors and sealed them after a clap of her hands.  
   
“Overwhelmed by what?”  
   
“The-the-the corpses. They were lying down one minute and the next they were on top of us.”   
   
Ed shook his head. It didn’t make any sense. “How is that possible?” _It_ isn’t _possible. There has to be some kind of explanation._  
   
“We were near the lobby trying to clear the hallways, like you said, when one of the stirred. It happened in the opposite wing of where we are now, near the children’s treatment wing when one of them stood up. We thought that it was just a fluke, that maybe not everyone was dead. Then more and more started rising.” He saw Teacher bring a first aid kit and begin to dab cotton on his scratched face. “Before we knew it half the room was already on him. Ripping apart his insides, intestines and such on the floor beside him…” He tried to look down as Teacher instructed him to keep eyes forward to better treat him. “For him to survive the freaky circle and the god guy only to fall prey to his… “ He shook his head, palms rubbing his reddening eyes. “What kind of cruel joke is this to a man who lost his family already.”  
   
Ed felt his fingers tremble. Swallowing hard, he wondered what that meant for the Colonel and the two that accompanied him. “The others are still out there in this.”  
   
“Ed, you can’t go out in this alone.”  
   
“We can’t just leave them there!” He shouted, realizing this was the first time he’s raised his voice at his teacher. In turn, she had been uncharacteristically quiet since the incident.  
   
Another blast of fire. But it was closer this time. Ed darted to the window and he saw the trio taking down the undead citizens of the Amestris. He clapped his hands together, quickly creating a stairwell and impromptu doorway for them from the second floor, using the concrete and the other materials from the edifice of the building.  
   
Scar and the Lieutenant adeptly changed their direction, pushing through toward the newly created steps.  Ed ran down with Izumi calling after him. It was reckless but if it ensured their safety, he’d risk it. He pushed the bodies aside with walls he created from the ground and yelled at them to get a move on.  
   
Scar protected the rear as the Colonel and Lieutenant moved up to the second floor to safety . From a distance, another crowd moved towards him. “Scar, we have to go!”  
   
Distracted by Ed’s shout, Scar was unable to avoid an impossibly bloated body slamming into him.  It exploded on impact, releasing a cloud of putrid green gas. The Ishavalan began to choke as additional bodies swarmed in .The smell, Ed noticed, attracted them.  
   
Ed ran forward and grabbed Scar, attempting to drag him away from danger, a feat of strength beyond that of a 16 year old boy. As the horde closed in on them, Izumi landed at Scar’s side. A tattooed arm around each of them, they carried him up the stairs.  
   
When they were all safely through the doorway, Edward clapped his hands, disintegrating  the stairs and sealing off the opening.  Bodies fell from the ascent and lay twitching on the ground as the rest of the mob began to rush the lower floor of the hospital.  
   
“Seal the windows! And exits!” Edward exclaimed. Feeling the spin of the world stopping, he ran to Alphonse’s room, fear clawing a hole in his gut.  
   
Bursting through the door he was met with May raggedly breathing and Alphonse clapping his hands, using alchemy to slam a cylinder of concrete into a body flinging it out of the window.  
   
“What is going on, Brother?” Alphonse asked wearily. Al’s knees buckled and his eyes fluttered,  passing out before Ed had a chance to answer. 

Ed darted forward before he hit the ground. “I don’t know Al, but I’m going to get us out of here”


	5. Alphonse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went without a beta for this one. All the errors are mine!

Alphonse grew up listening to comparisons made between him and his brother. It notably narrowed down to the peculiar color of their eyes and hair, rich and golden like the desert sun, and the attunement to their prodigious understanding of alchemy.

It was said Alphonse Elric was patient where his brother was rash, that regarded others with a gentler compassion where Edward was brash, and generally, an optimist down to his soul. It had been a beacon of pride for him. Humility and approachability were traits people loved about their mother and to be seen as such, when they hardly look like her, created a warm spot in the cold hollow of his armor. Throughout the day -- in his bouts of straying consciousness, he wondered if there was such a thing as too much optimism, and if he was just wrong about everything. That created a chilling spot in the warmth of his flesh body.

Alphonse thought about everyone he met, he laughed with, and held conversations. The people he knew little insignificant tidbits about, the smiles he had seen, the connections he had felt because of all of this. Not physically, but in his soul. He thought about them and each time he did his lip trembled and his throat became irritatingly tight as he was no longer used to have physical reactions to emotions. But this was the truth now: everyone he came in contact with during his journey - anyone who wasn’t sitting in this room - wouldn’t be able to celebrate with his accomplishment of regaining his body. He tried not to think of Resembool, fearing he’d spiral into something darker, and the day they had lost everyone somehow worsened.

Someone - or something - climbed through the window of his second floor hospital room and Al functioned on pure adrenaline to save his life and May’s. He wished he could cement the idea then and there that it was animalistic and not human. He felt conflicted arriving on that moral decision considering he was without a flesh body up until a few hours ago.

And that was the thing, Alphonse felt nothing but anxiety since leaving his armored body behind at the military grounds. He was frail, weak. He was now made of flesh and bone, not of metal and a bloodseal He couldn’t keep nutrients down and while he knew to expect this, he felt like a letdown to everyone. Nerves were on edge after what they saw this afternoon and he could pick it out like weeds around the hallway where they had all gathered the first night.

After the sun ducked under the horizon, the hospital lights shining down on the street had attracted the sacrifices, or so they decided to call them. They had tapped against the pale-red brick until the group ultimately decided to kill the lights. It would have been easier to just completely block out the had made a fire in the middle of the wing.

Colonel Mustang sat with them near the fire created from medical files and wooden clipboards to cook their evening meal. He, Brother and Teacher, they all had the same contemplative look on them – or perhaps it was shock. Their gazes were glossed over from the flames burning meekly in the spring nighttime.

Darius leaned against a wall, one foot propped against it, arms tightly crossed. Jerso donned a white patch right side of his skull. The chimera had lost his ear and they lost Zampano.

Al shifted his eyes away from the disturbed chimera. A loud thump startled him back to Darius’s direction. A balled fist created an indent to the wall behind it.

“This is ridiculous. We are sitting ducks!” The gorilla chimera paced anxiously.

Jerso stirred from his seat on the floor, watching Darius warily. Drowsiness clouded his eyes, a side effect of the medicine administered for his missing ear, but caution alerted them.

“You saw those things. Whatever that was was. It’s just like the mannequins in that white room. They move the same way, they don’t think!” His voice boomed and bounced off the walls. “What do we do about what’s out there?”

Alphonse clenched his fists weakly, an answer -- for once -- not springing immediately to his mind. Brother hadn’t moved from his gaze into the fire, but his shoulders were tensed and the bridge of his nose was crinkled slightly.

Darius twisted on his heels to face the Colonel and marched for him.

Lieutenant Hawkeye twisted her body to reach for a sidearm. They exchanged glares; the animosity still hanging from this afternoon.

“Where’s your plan now, Colonel?” His large arms were thrown up in the air with exasperation; he spoke an octave louder and with pause in between his words. The Colonel didn’t flinch even as the chimera . This seemed to frustrate Darius even more.

Darius opened his mouth to speak again and loud thuds banged against the wall behind the transmuted door.

“Lower your voice.”

“Or what? Is Colonel Mustang afraid that those things will break through the wall and get us?” He taunted.

“Lower - your - voice.” The Colonel iterated dangerously.

“Darius, stop it, man.” Jerso supplied, his eyebrows knit in concern and maybe fright. “We’re all just scared here. Nobody could have seen this coming.”

Darius inhaled deeply, chest extending and glaring around the room. He lifted his arms and balled fists pounded at his chest. The chimera opened his mouth to release a distinctive, ululating yell several notches louder than his speaking voice.

Alphonse covered his ears and winced, not entirely used to registering sound physically.

Teacher and the Lieutenant sprung up with the former quickly materializing a dagger with alchemy and the latter producing a handgun from her holster. Darius stopped immediately, putting his hands up.

“We don’t care if you feel like acting a fool and putting your own life at risk,” Teacher warned. “But don’t endanger the rest of us`

“Fine,” He spat, glancing towards the amphibian chimera. “Let’s go Jerso.”

Jerso tilted his head at the mention at his name. “Where are you going?”

“Away from here. I say we have better chances out there than stuck like canned meat in here.”

Jerso shook his head. “I don’t know.” It was the first time Al heard him stammer. “You didn’t see these things the way I did. If they’re anything like those mannequin soldier -- I don’t want a repeat of the white room. It was the fire colonel who saved us, remember? Not even the twerp stood a chance.“

Brother didn’t stir.

Jerso bowed his head towards his bent knees, running hands over the braided dreads down the length of his scalp. “And if they got Zampano…”

The tall man pursed his lips, anger and fear flashing through his face. “Suit yourself.” He walked over to the window, working on yanking the bolted wood panels off the walls. “You alchemists can fix this right up, right? Just like you fixed me?”

No one responded. Alphonse’s heart went out to him. He empathized with Zampano and jerso back in Baschool. But there was nothing to say. The people who he wanted to be angry with were dead; quite possibly walking the streets.

Small feet broke the tense silence as May approached the firelight. He gave her a knowing, appreciative smile whenever he saw her. Alphonse was told of her persistence in helping get through the first few hours, but it was that same persistence that miraculously had him out of bed. “What’s going on?”

“Darius wants to leave,” Jerso whispered to her. “I think he’s scared, little girl.”

“I am not scared!” Darius roared. “I just want to live! Without a cage.”

They all jumped from the nails ripping from the walls. Some clinked as the metal scattered on the floor.

“Enjoy your trapped existence.” was the last thing he said before he hopped out the window.

The silence following Darius’s departure hung over them, like a thick humidity, and uncomfortable. Teacher stood up, lifting the slatted barricade and Hawkeye went to help her reattach it. Undoubtedly, it was an easy feat for Teacher. Time, energy, and sound spared by the clap of two hands.

“How is Scar faring, May?” Teacher asked as the two rejoined them around the dying fire.  
  
May fumble with her fingers and her eyes focused on the floor. She released a sigh, “I don’t know what’s wrong with Mr. Scar. He’s warm with fever. I’ve given him what I know to stop try and bring it down. I’ve placed a wet towel over his head, but he’s unconscious. And I really don’t know why.”  
  
The Colonel perked. “What happened with Scar?”  
  
“One of the bodies exploded.” Brother looked down focusing on the floor as if the scene played on the tile in front of him. He wrung his hands. Alphonse noticed the fluidity of his automail was not all there, but Brother continued, “Something shrouded around him. I don’t know what it was. Unnatural if I had to describe it and then Scar collapsed after a few seconds. It was a close call.”

Confused, the Colonel frowned, “A gas?”

“A mist or something, yeah,” Brother responded and the older man didn’t say anything more, turning pensive.  
  
“Did you check his lungs?” Teacher asked.  
  
May nodded at Teacher, looking up with eyes that made Alphonse sad. “He’s breathing fine. My medical knowledge only goes so far. His chi flow isn’t blocked like when I tended to his wounds this morning.”  

“May,” Mustang called calmly.

After a moment May answered, “Yes?”

“You’ve mentioned chi and life force before right now.”

“It’s the basis to Alkahestry.”

“Can you sense anything in these things?” The Colonel asked.

“What are you thinking?” Teacher interjected May’s response.  
  
He leaned back into his chair, kicking one leg over the other. “Why the dead would rise. Most of this room knows full well the impossibility of the scenario.”  
  
Al glanced over to Hawkeye, staring at her commanding officer and unsure if he picked up a sadness in her eyes. It was hard to tell from the limited light.  
  
“Judging by the way that they burn, I’m assuming they look nothing like the mannequin soldier we encountered?”  
  
“No,” Brother said, stirring out of his silence. “They used to be human. They were once living humans, but now…” He struggled. “Now, I don’t know.”

“Then we find ourselves in a dead nation with its citizens suddenly rising up.” The Colonel said grimly. His greyed eyes looked into the fire with a focused determination.

Alphonse mused he could probably feel the warmth of the fire on his face; it almost convinced Alphonse that Mustang could see again.  
  
“They are another form of mannequin soldiers,” he continued. “But what’s animating them?”  
   
“I don’t sense anything different about them, not from what I’ve seen.” May answered his question from before.”

“And this isn’t something you see with your eyes?”

“No, it’s more like instinct, but if I concentrate then I can sense it.”

Mustang breathed out, “Can you teach me what you know?”

May looked at him thoughtfully, at the others, himself, and then back to the Colonel. “I can try.”

“What do you two know about it?”

In Aspec, Al remembered his feeble attempt to learn Alkahestry and their source derived from “chi”, “life force”, and “the Dragon’s pulse”. All three turned out to be synonymous. He wondered then if it was it’s lack of tangibility that made it difficult for him, or if it veered on the spiritual type of science that Alphonse simply didn’t attune well with.

Alphonse jumped again in his wheelchair before he could speak. An earsplitting yell rung through the streets, rattling him and the others. But it was getting nearer.

“Let me in! Let me back in!!”

Heads turned towards the window and it took a moment for all of them to realize the cries for help came from Darius whose voice had heightened several octaves.

Brother and Teacher scrambled to give Darius an entryway, collectively realizing why he needed help.  
  
Just like his persistence, his curiosity knew no bounds and his feet touched the cold of the hospital floor despite the warmth of the faltering fire. May stirred from his sudden movement as one hand held onto the IV stand. He took slow steps and his slow approach still managed to jolt his brother and the Lieutenant out of their stupor from watching. He noticed how none of them moved to assist him outside of the building. As if they were grounded by a fear neither of them had known.  
  
He slowly pivoted his head from his brother to the view past the window panes.

Darius was several blocks away, running with all his might. Behind him several bodies moved with impressive speed and a mob moved at a snail’s pace behind him, like the foot soldiers to the cavalry charging ahead.

Immediately, he noticed how none of them moved to assist him outside of the building. As if they were grounded by a fear none of them had known before, like an instinct deep down urged them to remain where if they were to keep their lives. With the little strength Alphonse gathered from only a day, he felt it down to his bones.

The running sacrifices looked terrifying, spastically moving forward in a way that wasn’t practical but they gained ground on the chimera nonetheless.

Breaking the fear-wrought silence, Brother extended his hand out, shouting in the encouraging, heart-thumping way that he does, “We’ve got you, Mr. Gorius! Run!”

The chimera, responding to the encouragement, picked up the speed of his sprint and prepared himself for a lunge only a chimera could accomplish.

However, a millisecond before he did, something from the shadows jumped out of the alley and tackled him to the ground. The manner in which it opened its mouth should have broken the joint at its mandible but it bit down on Darius’s neck. Darius’s arms and legs spastically shot out before he tried to claw the sacrifice off his neck.

In the cast of only the moonlight, Alphonse saw the blood that spilled towards the sky. Any of them looking out the window saw him reaching out towards them pleading them to help him. The front lines of the mob moved in on him and his screams were wretched and pained. Al couldn’t see Darius any more as the rest of them moved in on him. They clawed and ate as the survivors watched from the second story window of Central’s only hospital.

He screamed until they tore out his throat.


	6. Roy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave it to me to get sick around this time. These have to start coming out quicker and quicker.

If he had to describe it, it was like a heavy curtain. A weight so heavy on his eyes it blocked all light, all objects, every color except blindness, his toll, decidedly left him to take in his new world by only the senses that remained.

It had been quiet in the aftermath following the gruesome undoing of the chimera Darius and all he had done is sit.

He gripped his knees, and gathered the will to stand by himself. Little by little his confidence to do so dwindled with how incapacitated he was without his vision: falling over, bumping into things, and his general lack of direction. He lifted himself off of the chair, taking small steps towards the cool air; it's where he assumed the open window would be.

Roy tapped something with his foot and he cursed under a breath. The legs of a chair scraped against the wood in a short but harsh screech. He froze when he heard startled gasps. "It's just me," he tried to reassure, putting his hands up. Sighing, shuffling, and footsteps.

His ear twitched. The air froze again and before he could ask what was happening the shouting began.

"Get those slats back on the wall." That was Fullmetal. He said it urgently.

Roy turned his head trying to triangulate where exactly it came from.

Someone clapped their hands and more footsteps shuffled. He was unsure whether he was fine where he was or whether he needed to move.

"Quickly! They're coming!" Izumi, if he had to guess.

"Shit, that one is coming really fast..." Fullmetal again. "May, take Al and stay back."

To his left, he heard thumping, like someone trying to get through or several. Before Roy could say the name on his tongue, she grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the noises. They rounded the corner of something and he was instructed to crouch.

"Colonel, stay right here."

"I'm not entirely useless, Lieutenant."

"I know," she said, breathless. The thumping continued with the shouting in the background. "But it wouldn't be prudent to use your flames in here." And that was that. Hawkeye's footsteps receded. It couldn't have been more than a couple minutes since Darius's morbid screams ended but it had felt like drawn out hours.

Briefly, Roy wondered what was it about Alkahestry that made energy visible. It made him suddenly missed the warmth of the was dark and cold. He was also rendered useless

The crack of wood shattering sounded beyond the structure he was leaning against. There was struggling, snarling, and he jumped when the gunshot rang out and the thumping became insistent and forceful. With the noises clouding his mind, Roy couldn't even begin to know where it was.

The shattering must've been one of the sacrifices forcefully entering the hospital, he soon realized, and it made him more angry that he was reduced to sitting on the sidelines. He touched around him feeling the cool metal handles of cabinets and solid cabinet doors. A flat surface edged just above his head with random papers strewn across them. He gripped the edge and lifted himself steadily off the cold floor.

The floor rumbled underneath up. He heard familiar electricity sparks.

"Teacher!" Fullmetal shouted, but not in his indignant way. It was broken up with concern and worry. An animalist growl filled the room with a ferocity capable of instilling fear into any man.

Roy quickly ducked on instinct when he heard gushing noises and drips  _splattering_ on the floor.

The shout Fullmetal released shook Roy, followed by incessant "no, no, no"s. His words were bogged down by emotion and he could hear Hawkeye's voice trying to soothe him, maybe even held him back. Something sounded like it was eating, squelching with every move.

If Roy had to guess, perhaps his alchemy teacher had met a gruesome end like Darius and Roy sympathized as he was sure he held her in high esteem.

Booted footsteps stepped across in front of him and something was picked up. He heard small, whimpered cries off distantly, but the thumping was persistent. Something was struck, or maybe impaled judging by the same wet noises he heard and the distinct sound of a body dropped to the floor.

A rod, or a spear, or a long, two handed weapon clattered to the floor. Hawkeye quietly beckoned Izumi over to her. It was still cold so maybe the window was still open.

"Al…" Fullmetal trailed off.

"Alphonse." A squeakier voice cried.

"Al… wake up."

Roy's stomach plunged as he put two and two together. His mouth went dry before he could realize it was hanging open.

"Alphonse…" His voice broke and choked as he reiterated his name. The small cries were muffled.

His own throat clamped up and his blood ran cold. He didn't have the capacity at that moment to form any words, much less any thoughts.

"Ed…" said the alchemy teacher, sobs weighing down her words. "I'm so sorry."

He heard sniffling, and couldn't begin to know why he suddenly yearned to have Hawkeye in arm's length.

"You let him die." Fullmetal started, low and quiet as a means to mask the clear anguish underneath

"Ed, I-"

"He trusted you to take care of it and you let it  _eat him_."

"It was a child, Ed!"

Breath escaped him as if he were sucker punched, trying to picture the horrifying image.

"You just stood there. It was a monster and it ate... my only brother!" Fullmetal cried. "And you just  _stared at it."_

Roy used the edge as a means to go around the corner. In his best attempt to sound comforting, he said, "Fullmetal."

The thumping stopped and splintering took over behind him. He turned as if he would magically see what it was and he was tackled to the floor; his head hitting the floor - hard.

"Colonel!"

Whatever it was on top of him, Roy had enough training to keep it at bay. He heard the sounds of teeth clashing with one another as the sacrifice tried to sink it's teeth into him. It wasn't heavy, but it was persistent.

The weight vanished followed by a gunshot; Hawkeye's doing. "Someone please get the compromised wall," she ordered, standing over him. Her voice was suddenly closer, "Are you hurt?" Her hands searched for wounds.

Roy shook his head with a different weight on him. "Alphonse," he whispered.

Hawkeye froze and he imagined her eyes widened too. He suddenly missed seeing them too, and his head felt cold. Eyelids felt heavy.

"Sir! You're bleeding!." That would explain the wetness under his skull. "Stay with me," she called as she left him to go rummage through something.

Before he closed his eyes, all he could hear was the small whimpers and someone whispering "Alphonse" repeatedly.

* * *

Roy came to suddenly, almost violently. His upper body jutted upwards so forcefully that if anyone were to be hovering over him he'd surely break noses in several places. The darkness spun.

Before, Roy wondered if he'd be able to differentiate sleep and his dreams, but he was spared of wondering any longer. At least in his dreams, he could still pick out the colors and light and recognize faces and expressions. But waking up now felt like being asleep.

Gaining his bearings, Roy recognized the military standard fabric of the sheets on him and the feeble excuse for a mattress underneath. He slanted his mouth and chewed on his lip nervously, paralyzed from not knowing what to do if she wasn't there. "Lieutenant," he called out, more as a question than a statement.

Someone to his right inhaled sharply. "Right here, sir."

A relief. "What time is it? What's happened?"

Chains rattled. Holding her yawn she said, "0300 hours, sir." And something metal clicked. She had his watch.

He cleared his throat, pulling back the last thing he remembered before he woke up. "What happened?"

This time she paused intentionally. "You fell unconscious after hitting your head."

He frowned, "As in... fainted?"

"For lack of a better word, yes. Edward and Izumi figured it has to do with exhaustion in addition to the wound to your head." He touched the bandage wrapping around his temples. "… and I agree, sir."

"Exhaustion?" Roy asked skeptically.

She sighed, "I'd argue it's been incredibly strenuous for you."

"What about you?" He wasn't sure why he was so annoyed. Maybe it was her self-sacrifice.

"Colonel,  _I_ wasn't forced to go through human transmutation -"

"Your neck-"

"-and I can see you're straining to make up for your loss of sight by heavily exerting your other senses."

Roy opened his mouth to argue, probably to deny it, but he knew sitting in the darkness was easier than trying to paint a canvas with tools that weren't made for the job. Every waking moment. He sulked momentarily, fisting the blankets over him. He hated when she was right. It wasn't a matter of pride or ego neither:

Something in his chest itched to ask another question, but he felt he already knew the answer. Therefore, he defaulted to formalities, something to cower behind. "Lieutenant, status report."

She cleared her throat. "The injury to your head is superficial, but I can only go by my limited First Aid training and what May advises.

Alphonse Elric has passed away from injuries to his neck and the excavation of his bowels." There it was. She struggled with the last bit, but she didn't falter. "The body has been wrapped in a cloth and placed in the other side of the wing. Before retreating, I ensured that the surrounding areas were secure."

"And how are you?"

She sighed. "As expected, all of us our mourning, sir. Alphonse was very close to our-"

"I didn't ask about everyone else," he said softly. "I asked about you."

He noticed she faltered then. Her words sounded like they wanted to escape her but she held them back. Furniture squeaked like it does when someone shifts their weight in a chair.

For one reason or another, he was inclined to ask: "Are you scared?"

"Sir…"

Her deflection confirmed it. "It's a simple question."

The bed dipped at his side. He was left in the dark to imagine what her face looked like, her expression, her posture. She was close, arm's distance if he had to guess. He could hear her breathing, a rarity for the composed sniper.

An electric shock shot through him when her hand slipped into his. He was just as ready to toss aside formalities, clasping her hand in return. He felt warm drops splash on the back of his hand. Thumbs circled over the thin layer of skin with the pressure of small, but capable hands. He could feel the thrum of her heartbeat drumming rapidly against her skin. Her subtle touch spoke to him clearly. It said uncertainty. Exhaustion. Concern.

Fear.

"You're absolutely terrified," he whispered

Quietly, she said, "Yes, I am. Can you blame me?"

The number of times Riza Hawkeye outwardly expressed fear to him were confined to the adolescent years long past. Never in Ishval, or as Wrath's hostage, or even in the grips of death - hands reddened from the blood of her neck. She exhaled with the slightest tremble trailing the end of her breath. He felt it flutter the cloth of the blankets over him.

"I failed to inform you…" she began and it hitched his breath, "outside, as Darius attempted to come back inside, I saw them."

"Who?" Roy croaked.

"The ones -" the words crumbled in her throat. "The ones missing from the radio station: Lieutenant Heyman Breda, Major Sergeant Kain Fuery, and Lieutenant Rebecca Catalina." Her body twitched, like she was trying to contain a sob that just wouldn't. She sniffled and could picture her wiping the tears with the back of her hand. "Excuse me, sir."

_Sir._  He repeated in his head mockingly. Roy felt the wetness on his cheeks when he tugged her closer. Roy held her to his chest, cradling her head as she grasped at the short he wore; it dampened as she sobbed quietly into it. He lowered his lips to the top of her head, and pursed them into her hair as she muffled the sniffles. He cried with her in the dark.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IM SORRY BABY BOY ;-;


	7. Edward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shortie for the shorty.

He pushed the thoughts away, keeping them far away before the synapses clicked together and formulated the human transmutation circle knowing full well it wouldn’t work.

He yelled at Teacher, _blaming her_ , for what had happened and it was like he was trying to go through the five stages of grief all in a single go. Anger and bargaining battling with each other, suppressing the sad, pushing away the acceptance he needed to embrace. But denial was no problem. He’d seen what happened as if it were replayed in slow motion. That’s what he was trying to push back.

Edward could not sleep through the night, exhausted as it was. He tossed and turned on the uncomfortable hospital cot, waking up in cold sweat several times. Though, by the time he really opened his eyes, the sun had traveled far into the sky.

Nobody had woken him up.

Huffing, Ed swung his legs over the bed and slipped on his boots; being treated like a child made of glass was the last thing he wanted. It sounded lively in the hall. Voices crept through the door, garbled;he couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying. Ed entered into the hallway and the everyone stopped. It agitated his temper when they turned to look at him and froze as if they were caught doing something they weren’t supposed to.

The Lieutenant, loose-haired and scraggly in clothes bigger than her, pushed off the nurses’ counter. “Good morning, Edward. We’ve heated some food if you’re hungry,” she gestured behind the counter.

Slightly appreciative of Hawkeye keeping her serious disposition. He moved from the patient’s room around the counter. May looked down as he glanced at her, briefly catching the puffy eyes and red nose. The Colonel stared forward, bags under his greyed out eyes. Scar and Jerso were nowhere to be found and Teacher -

Well, it seemed like she was avoiding looking at him all the same.

Ed grabbed the warmed can off the counter and plunged a spoon into the beans, but he might as well flung it to the wall. He hated this tiptoeing, this pity. The floor wasn’t made of eggshells and neither was he.

“All of sudden everyone is quiet,” he scooped in a spoonful of watery beans into his mouth. “What were you talking about?” Ed turned his head, curiously. He looked at the scraps of polymer and metal springs and random clips for ammunition. “What’s this?

“Ed,” Teacher finally said. “Are you-”

“I’m fine,” he snapped, jutting the spoon into his beans. Ed put down the can with enough force to spill some of the liquid out of the lip, suddenly not hungry anymore. His tongue searched for shells of the legumes on his teeth. “What were you all discussing?”

Teacher went rigid.

Hawkeye shifted, after looking across the room, “I proposed leaving the hospital in search of supplies.”

“Why?” He asked plainly, glaring into her. “I thought we had enough supplies. It’s only been a day. Do eight - sorry, seven people go through that much in one day?”

He should have known better than to challenge the Lieutenant in a battle of stares. She wasn’t amused and the Colonel sitting behind her didn’t either. “For firearms, ammunition, for when we do leave Central, which we planned on doing soon.”

For the first time ever, Teacher looked demure as she spoke, like another layer of her thickened skin had been stripped away. “We figured that lesser populated areas would be safer than being in the city.”

Something flared within him, unsure where it came from. “We? Am I suddenly not a part of the discussion? Alphonse dies and -” he choked, placing a fist over his mouth. He cleared his throat straightening himself. His eyes burned and May suddenly left the hall, but she could still hear her sobbing into a cushion.

“We all are very, _very_ sorry for what happened to Alphonse, Edward.” Hawkeye started, squeezing her eyes shut and balling her fists against the desk, and he realized it just stung that much more when someone else said it. “Miss Izumi most of all as she feels most responsible.”

“How about we don’t worry about that for the time being?” He couldn’t even begin to prepare to go down that emotional alley. Ed took in a deep breath, blinking at the ceiling, “I’ll go.”

Simultaneously, the three adults expressed their skepticism, “What?”

“Out there,” he clarified. “Just tell me where to go.” He chewed on another spoonful of beans.

“It would be reckless to go out there yourself,” Teacher warned, but he shrugged off her words. “I’ll go with you.”

“That’s not-”

“I’ll go with him too,” the Lieutenant said, before he could protest. “I still have an entire clip left and you’ll need to know where to go.” The barrel clicked as she jammed it into the firearm.

“Lieutenant,” the Colonel said, concerned. Ed looked at them, she stared at him. He morbidly wondered if they still did that weird thing where they could look at each other and have an entire conversation by just glancing at each other.

“Then we should leave as soon as possible,” Ed interjected into the silence.

“Edward,” Hawkeye said warily.

“Why wait? The dead are already dead, it’s not like they have weapons.”

She gripped him by the shoulder as he walked past her and it grated on him. He tried to maneuver his shoulder to get loose, but she gripped harder. She stepped closer, looming over him even though they were nearly the same height. “Promise me you won’t be reckless out there.” She looked to the side for a moment and met his eyes again. “Grief can make you do stupid things at the cost of other. Promise me you won’t.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He rolled off her hand. He’d keep his head. He’d keep it under control. He knew he could. What else could he fuck up? “Let’s get back as soon as possible then.”

Hawkeye nodded in confirmation and let him pass.

He heard all three go back into a conversation he, quite frankly, no longer cared for.

Edward was yanked to the side by his sleeve, the shirt was that much bigger than him exposing his shoulder. He stumbled into one of the patient rooms.

It was May.

She was crying so hard and so silently he was curious where the constant stream of tears came from. Her pet bear-cat sat next her. She was clutching her chest as if it were close to unravelling in front of her. Ed only suspect she had a crush, but she was crying enough for the both of them. For whatever reason, that hurt him. Not just for her, but for a thought he painfully pushed back even further. Vaguely, he realized there would be a point that space would run out.

May pointed to the door and he closed it behind him as she centered in the room.

“May,” he said, more annoyed than he intended.

She said something but it came out in squeaks and sobs, falling to her knees.

He crouched down closer to her.

“I - I was saving it for him, I was helping him.”

“What are you talking about May?”

“He was getting better, quicker than any of your realized.”

He crunched his brow, unable to connect the dots. The muscles on his legs and arms tensed and chilled like when he stepped off for the train for the first time in North City.

May dug into her creases of her robes and it glittered in her head, refracting off the light that slipped in from the slats. A vibrant, red crimson that resembled the blood and soul that was used as sacrifice to make it. Her tears fell on vial only served to make the viscous liquid inside more brilliant.

Mouth gaping, he stared at it, then her. “May..where did you get this?”

She hiccuped from her incessant whimpers. “Bring him back.”

A knot formed in his throat, thick and drying. He swallowed, feeling the cold sweat prickle the nerves on his skin. “Where did you…”

“Bring him back, Ed.” She looked up and her dark eyes, bloodshot as they were, shook him.

She didn’t know, he thought to himself. She didn’t know why Al was in the body he was in or why he had an automail arm and leg. She wouldn’t have the gall to ask this, but it enraged him all the same. She didn’t know. She didn’t know.

His automail creaked as it formed a fist.

May’s shoulder slumped and she bowed her head - her entire body lowered to the ground like offerings made to gods.

“Get that away from me, May,” he growled lowly. “And get up.”

She curled her her fingers in and straightened her posture, pleading once more. “Please... I watched him die.”

He turned away from her as his brow quivered, hands shaking. Before walking out the door, he told her, “Don’t let anyone else see that.”

 

 


	8. Riza

Riza ran. As hard and fast as her legs would allow her. The breath burned in her lungs like they were licked with fire. The bag over her shoulder jostled with each step and it rattled the guns in them along with the ammunition.

At some point, Riza had lost both Izumi and Edward after coming across that monstrosity and she couldn't even place when. She just looked back and they were gone.

Her neck tensed and suddenly, her mouth grew dry. She fought over whether she call out to either of them or risk getting herself in an unfortunate situation akin to Darius's demise.

Riza controlled her breathing, refusing to lose her head in this situation no matter how stark.

Her shoulders found the rough surface of the brick. Glancing at the houses that lined the avenue, she wondered how many people were stopped in the midst of their day. How many people were listening to the radio or in the middle of cooking to feed their families. She thought about this as she contemplated the decision to enter one of the doors, questioning its safety. She kidded herself; the streets were no safer.

She willed stability into the shake of her knees and pressed forward. When Riza reached the end of the alley, she looked over the corner only to reel her head back in.

There were several sacrifices wandering. She also heard snarling and it was close. The bloodthirst was familiar, but held no candle to ominous aura of the homunculi. Sweat dripped down the curve of her back.

Despite her military trained stillness, the snarling grew closer as if its senses were more acute than those she had previously encountered. Her eyes opened slowly in terrifying realization that it was slowly moving towards her. She flattened herself against the brick, the coarse cloth of the duffel handle cutting into the creases of her fingers.

She moved a hand carefully towards her loaded firearm and that seemed to aggravate it. She couldn't tell by its face, but by the sounds. She froze and said a silent apology to those she let down.

* * *

  _Earlier_

They didn't leave immediately.

Riza stood in front of a reinforced window as May taught Roy what she knew about Alkahestry. She watched migrating birds perch themselves on rooftops where the sacrifices jumped and stretched to reach them. The birds were unbothered, more invested in the flex of the wings and breeze of the wind, and it taught her two things: One, the sacrifices were led by an animalistic, rudimentary instinct – heat, smell, and noise for their sustenance and it wasn't just humans. And two, they didn't eat their own.

The dead rising aside, she wondered why they sought living flesh. She knew they all hadn't risen at the same time; if her fallen friends had awoken before she arrived to the radio station, why did they leave behind the bodies like Mrs. Bradley's untouched? Why the birds out of their reach?

She turned heel swiftly and walked to exist the room.

"Lieutenant? Where are you going?"

"I'll return shortly, I need to find Edward and Miss Izumi."

She found the teacher talking to Jerso and they beelined to Edward's room through the open door.

"Are you finally ready to go out there?" He asked, staring blankly at the wall and holding his knees close to the chest.

"I know how to get out there safely."

Edward stirred from where he sat on Alphonse's old cot and twisted his torso to look at her.

Riza pointed to the birds and explained how the sacrifices weren't smart enough to go through the buildings to get to them.

Izumi grabbed her chin pensively, "Yes, It'd be safer to go across rooftops, but—"

"There wouldn't be enough material to do it without compromising the entire structure," Ed finished for her.

Riza breathed out, slightly disappointed in the limitations of alchemy.

Edward stepped out closer to the window, "But who's to say we can't use the road and the ground underneath? You know, elevate the ground."

"That would still require a substantial of components to transmute from the ground and take a  _lot_  of time," said Izumi.

Edward scowled, "Not to mention that still wouldn't keep us safe from the crawler that got in last night."

Riza bit her lip.  _The crawler_ , she thought and supposed it was better than thinking of it as the cannibalistic, sacrificed child. "Then raise walls, create barriers to safeguard our passage. Any crawler that climbs won't be silent about it and the sleekness will make it harder than grabbing on to ledges." They were silent, chewing it over in their heads before they nodded their heads in agreement. Riza looked at the shadows outside, "And it'd be better to go while it's lighter and less places for these things to hide in."

Not long after, the survivors, except for Scar who was still unconscious, gathered around the reinforced doors.

Like a nervous tick, she checked and counted the number of bullets in the clip. It popped back in with a secure click. Riza eyed the firearm, thumbing over the scorched metal. She pulled it off someone in the midst of the fight back to the hospital and she only noticed the damage to it caused by the Flame Alchemist. He stood next to Jerso and May as Izumi transmuted the doors open. He was worried and there was an entire population of reasons to be.

For the second time in as many days, she felt emboldened enough to step forward, cup one cheek, and kiss the other. She promised him she'd returned with haste.

"That's an order," he jested and she was sure Edward made a face.

Beyond their barred doors turned out to be surprisingly empty, not even bodies from the fight within the hospital, and she questioned if they could even be permanently killed without fire.

Wasting no opportunity, Edward and Izumi sealed off new parts of the hospital to take advantage of the hospital's supplies.

Broken glasses scattered and glittered the floor like jagged gems. The stench of decomposed bodies lingered despite the absence of them and it stubbornly stuck to the membranes of her sinuses. She signaled them to move forward and the alchemists blocked off the passage they just came through.

Body low, Riza tiptoed around the shards and toward the edges of the wide doors. A few lingered in the open road. She heard a low moan and she brought her body back fast. Riza hissed and Edward dropped behind down next to her. Izumi stopped moving, ducking behind a recess of the wall where she couldn't be seen.

The sacrifice stopped in front of the broken entrance. It produced guttural noises that throttled in its throat. Riza's skin prickled with the cold that flashed throughout her body; a nervous drop of sweat trailed down her taut neck. Her head and back was glued to the surface behind her, and she daren't breathe. The corners of the gun burrowed into her sternum from her grip, knuckles turned white as if she forgot she was ever in the military. Her knees were protesting from the uncomfortably stiff bend. She ignored it, straining to listen.

"My….s...on." It spoke, choked. Riza saw Izumi clasp her fingers over her mouth.

It was only the one and there was no doubt they were more than capable of dealing with the one. The problem lied with several, the mass of them. The quick ones. The ones they didn't know about. All beckoned at the sound of screech. It still rung in her ears.

Izumi's wide eyes narrowed, brow furrowing, as she nudged her head sideways to communicate "take it out". Riza shook her head rigidly.

Before Riza could stop him, Edward took the signal and ran around her to transmute a maul from the ground, and pushed it back. It cried out and Izumi sprung from her hiding spot and said, "Do it – now!"

They clapped their hands. The movement gathered the attention of the other stragglers. The one that was pushed back bared her teeth in an animalistic snarl, dashing towards them.

Riza fired reluctantly, cursing the boom ricocheting off the street. She hit squarely in the chest and it fell back onto the concrete. The three limped in their direction, lacking the speed of the first one.

Electricity sparked and walls erupted out of the earth. It soared to the edges of the roofs. At the last possible moment, she saw the sacrifice shot she saw clamber its way back onto its feet; Riza muttered a low expletive.

They repeated with each block; Edward taking the right, while Izumi took care of the left, and Riza kept watch for any crawlers.

The sun was at a high point by the time they reached the store and a safe passage back to the hospital was ensured too. If her guns couldn't keep her entirely safe, then at least her idea amongst alchemists did.

Before entering, she could hear the inarticulate groans and moans of those behind the walls. "Let's go in," she looked to Edward. " _Carefully."_

The shop owner was lingering in the back. Edward created a trap door to place her in the cellar. Riza looked down at the shop owner; she had been close to retiring. Elaine had mentioned she'd go out to the countryside and leave this all to a relative so she could finally rest. Riza prayed to whatever actual merciful being was out there that she'd find that pasture even if her soul was forfeited.

After Edward sealed it, Riza stopped him. "What you did back there could have gone terribly wrong."

He frowned, "Where?"

Riza knew he knew what she was referring to. Izumi crossed her arms and said, "At the hospital."

Edward grumbled, "But it didn't. If anything, it'll get us back quicker to  _your_ Colonel Matchstick." His inflection was surprisingly antagonistic, even for him.

"Grab a dufflel hanging from the wall," she said, choosing to ignore his barb. "And load as many as you all can."

Assault rifles, pistols, revolvers, boxes upon boxes of ammunition and anything that could reasonably fit were loaded between the three of them.

"I always knew you and the bastard were pretty chummy," said Edward, smirking at her when she looked up. "Never knew you two were a thing."

"A thing never existed until what you saw this afternoon." She buckled in a holster as she said it. "Now if you please, get back to work."

He mumbled something out of earshot and she smiled despite herself.

Riza glanced to the storefront as the ground shook beneath her.

Chunks of rock flew like projectiles across the store. Once the dust settled, the hole in Izumi's walls was unmistakable. In front of it, the culprit stood: a giant, angry and slouchy. Its arms were preposterous. The skin of it was swollen and discolored - no doubt a result of the decomposing body which was a combination of an ill pink and greyed blue. Its eyes were more disturbing the rest of them - a bright yellow shining like a lamplight in the night and impossibly so.

"Is that-Is that Buccaneer?"

She only had a moment to notice before it noticed them and that line of Mohawk was undeniable.

He bent down and grabbed a slab of asphalt as if it was as easy to pick up as gelatin.

"We need to grab the bags and go through the back," Izumi urged. "Right. Now."

Before she moved away from the windows, Riza saw it swing its arms back as if it was preparing to launch it. She sprinted, fastening the duffel to her shoulder, and headed to the back of the store

Izumi clapped her hands to transmute the brick of the building as a blockage. Riza thought the action was well intentioned, but terribly judged. The thing would just break it in a few seconds, judging by the gaping wound in the wall. The few seconds it would be cancelled out by the time it took to create it. The building trembled terribly when they reached the avenue behind the store. The force swung the door open.

To their right, a mob of the sacrifices ran to in front of the opening of the avenue. One of them noticed them, growled, and dashed towards them. Sparks swam across the sides of the brick and Izumi stopped it with a makeshift barrier.

"Let's go – quick."

"We're going the opposite way," Edward complained.

Riza huffed in response. "We'll figure out a way back. We just need to lose them. We can't have that following us back to the hospital."

It was waiting for them at the other side.

Izumi felt it was a good opportunity to crack her knuckles. Izumi sent spikes made from the road towards the strongarmed sacrifice. It lifted its hand, stopping it in one fell swoop. Izumi launched an oversized spear from the materials nearby only to be swatted, throwing up debris into the air.

Riza's eyes widened, "It's impervious; we need to move before more come."

It stepped forward.

"What? We can take it – everything has a weakness!"

It was slow.

"Edward," she said, hearing the fear in her own voice. "You promised."

But the shake of the ground resonated in her chest.

"Against one maybe, but when hundreds or more come, they will become overwhelming. It's not just a mindless sacrifice - it's something more than that. Please be smarter than this."

He glared, but relented. "Okay, lead the way."

* * *

 

The sacrifice stopped a few paces away and her heart stopped with it.

An explosion rumbled throughout the vicinity, feeling it ripple through her skin and rattle her thoughts to silence. It stopped the snarling and she took that moment to slowly side-step away. The sacrifice limped past her towards the noise. More sacrifices ran towards that same direction, other stumbled, as if a selected few held the ability.

It hadn't come in the direction of the hospital and for that she was silently thankful. She hoped Edward wasn't thoughtless enough to create a blast of that magnitude. She could see the shroud of black clouds coloring the spring sky.

With the street cleared, she darted in a half crouch, cautious and observant. Looking for any sign of Izumi or Edward. She refused to face the brutish sacrifice on her own, knowing her abilities were ineffective as throwing rocks.

She finally returned to the shopping district and was happy when she saw the tunnel they had transmuted; the hospital would be but a few streets over. Her run slowed to a stop in front of the face of it. With any sense of rationality, the alchemists would try to find this passageway again. Maybe in their separation, they could have been enroute back to the hospital already.

Her warmed palm met the cool stone. She was stuck. She couldn't climb over the smooth surface. She could make for the roofs or find another way into the hospital through sacrifice-infested streets. Riza glanced behind her; it was still empty of any threats. They had disappeared before she knew she was gone and part of her feared the worst. Another hoped that their alchemy abilities kept them alive. If anything, she was in more danger without them.

It took her a moment, but it dawned on her how truly paralyzed in fear she was without realizing it. If they were in trouble, she was finding every reason not to look back – to not even try. Like a dog with its tail tucked between her legs. She wasn't an alchemist; her father had made sure of that. But she knew – she  _knew,_  damn it! – that alchemy was ineffective against Buccaneer's sacrifice and there was always safety in numbers.

Nails biting into her palms, she turned heel and went back to look for them.


	9. Edward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very gruesome stuff here. heed the warnings.

They ran in a line with brick blurring past them. He was running behind them both and he felt reluctant with their decision to run away from the sacrifice. Ed groaned in annoyance when Izumi began to slow down - that's when he saw the drops of blood color the concrete.

Izumi swayed to the left, then stumbled to the right, grabbing at the brick wall, until she curled toward the ground.

"Teacher?" He ran towards her and saw the puddle of blood in front of her. She was as pale as the white smock she wore. The hand covering her mouth was smeared red, trying to contain it within her without any luck, as the other clutched around her stomach. "Teacher, we need to get you up. We need to go."

The alleyway was empty by the time he looked up. _Shit, shit, shit,_  he thought, panicked. Ed grabbed Izumi's bloodied hand and flung it across his shoulders, hoisting her up by the waist. He hobbled with her and two additional bags of firearms in tow; heart racing with the sound of sacrifices nearing. If he tried to call for Hawkeye now, he'd surely lead the sacrifices straight to them.

He looked over to Izumi. Her braids doubled as curtains barring view of her face, but the way her head lolled and bounced freely with each step, Ed knew she was losing consciousness. This was the absolute last thing he needed. Ed wasn't sure how exactly the woman survived all these years without her organs, but she was made of stronger stuff than to die like this.

He readjusted her again with a hop and his automail began to creak. The noise of dragged footsteps and unintelligible words felt as near as the goosebumps texturing his neck. There were other footsteps vibrating the ground underneath his left leg, something so heavy and slow moving in the vicinity that it couldn't have been anyone other than Buccaneer's sacrifice.

"This is bad," he muttered to himself. "This is so bad. Teacher, please wake up." He put her and the firearms down; he needed to be more mobile than this. From the stone, he transmuted a fused wheelbarrow decorated with two angled plows at the front should he need to run through a crowd. Ed lifted the rear handles once he nestled Izumi and the bags into the cart and continued hastily.

His genius idea struggled with the practicality of the wheelbarrow as the blades at the front scraped the ground. He continued down the corridor, deciding to risk it. The faster he ran, the more sparks jumped from the ground and the louder it got.

Ed found himself at one of the residential areas of Central and figured it best to safeguard Teacher in one of these houses while he searched for Hawkeye. Breaking down the door of the first house on his right. Walking backwards into the abode, he immediately stopped at the doorway. At first, Ed waited, listening for any movement, then a sulfuric, grody odor engulfed he might've wanted to smell that day. He put a sleeve over his nose and mouth, quickly craning his neck to peek into the rooms for any signs of a cannibalistic sacrifice.

He looked into the center of the house, at his cargo, then back to the house. "I'll be right back." He ran in, searching for water and unwanted guests. The house only had one floor and after swinging every door open, he was able to determine it was empty - to his luck. In the kitchen, it became pungent. There was a soft hissing noise coming from the stove and an obvious display ingredients laid out on the counter in preparation for whatever meal they were about to cook. A faint memory of Mom crept back to him, warning him and Al about leaving the gas stove on and what to do whenever he smelled the awful rotten egg smell; the picture was blurry from time.

His head snapped up to the streetside window he heard a screech from outside. It was piercing and loud that he immediately covered his ears. He made for the front door and it had stirred Teacher too.

"Ed?" she asked groggily. "What was that?"

They spilled out of the shadows, spotting them, as if the screech had been a call from one of them.

"Their mating call or something…" Deciding he had no time, he detached the plow from the front and ripped a piece of cloth from Izumi's smock to place over her bloodied mouth. He placed her hand over it and instructed, "Don't breathe it in." From his own sleeve, Ed cut a piece and wrapped it around his face. He wheeled her backwards through the length of the house to the fenced backyard. Izumi began to cough and he tried to move as fast as he could without bumping into anything that could mean their doom. He slid open the glass door and painstakingly moved the barrow through. The sacrifices tried to enter all at once through the front door as he shut the one behind him.

Gaining some distance, he opened one of the bags and Izumi gave him a questioning looking, "What are you doing?"

"Making it easier for Hawkeye to find us," he said, grabbing a single pistol and opening a box of ammo. "I hope… if she's still alive."

Her head fell back and she groaned, "Do you know which ones go with which?"

Ed loaded a few bullets. He'd take a page out of the Colonel's book and create a spectacle. "It doesn't matter; I just need a spark once part of the bullet is in the barrel. Can you help me?"

Wiping her face, she tried climb out of the cart. He caught her hand as she fell forward, but she regained her balance - straightening herself as he looked at her warily. She ignored him, "What do you need?"

Pulling the gun's hammer, he said, "As soon as I throw this, transmute a wall around us." Ed breathed when she nodded. The sacrifices hit the glass with open palms. Ed flinched when one of them managed to splinter it and it grew with each impact; he needed to be patient. Judging by the tremor underfoot, it wouldn't be long.

He noticed a body bulkier than the rest move into sight. He flung the loaded gun into the kitchen's window, hoping the force of his throw and contact with the floor would be trigger enough for it to go off.

Time slowed when the pistol broke through the window.

Izumi's barrier was already going up when he saw the brute sacrifice go through the front of the house. Just as sickly colored as he remembered with disproportionately engorged arm on one side and atrophied on the other. Swollen and with a dead look in his eyes. But it wasn't Buccaneer. It wasn't even wearing anything close to an Amestris uniform.

The dark head of hair was unmistakable and he remembered seeing that thick beard for the first time in Resembool, wondering how old he'd have to be to get facial hair that full. The familiar sound of a gunfire and subsequent flame seemed to have lasted forever, but Ed saw the quick catch of the fire right before Sig's widow pulled him down and the walls went high up.

The sound of the explosion was incredible and the earth trembled - as did he. Ed told himself this was the reality of their failures and mistakes and heresy. He wiped the tears running down his face, and tried to catch a breath.

"Ed, what's wrong?"

Another explosion brought down rocks from their barrier. He figured another house must've been filled with gas too. Ed remained silent, concentrating on the fire roaring and wood falling to the earth. He waited before he answered, "It's nothing." Ed stood and transmuted a door out of the dirt cylinder. "Let's go see the damage."

As expected, the charred wood of the houses that burned laid on the ground, some still harboring some flames as they turned to ash. But none of the sacrifices stood back up, which was his only morbid relief. He watched Izumi hobble on the grass, clutching her sides. He sighed, gripping the handles of the cart, "Teacher, it'll be easier if you get back in."

"I can walk," she tried to say proudly.

"Not fast enough." Ed gestured towards the cart, "Please."

Scrunching a confused brow, she obliged. He lifted the handles and walked briskly back to the sidewalk around the side of the house. He was jumpier than he realized. One of the boards gave into the weight, assuming it was a moving body, and Ed was embarrassed that it had startled him.

The cart swerved awkwardly as Ed tried to evade the body that materialized from thin air. He lost any balance when it veered off into the sidewalk. He released the handle when it twisted his wrist painfully from trying to catch it. Despite his efforts, they fell onto the road.

The sun caught in his eyes when he tried to readjust. In the way it was angled, the light only permitted him to see the silhouette of a woman until it stepped closer.

The sight paralyzed his already shaken ability to process and from his peripheral, he could see Izumi clasp a hand over her mouth. The thing in front of them looked like a normal sacrifice, but her mouth was ringed with dark, crusted blood. The loose shirt on this thin woman was stained red and ripped into tatters from where she could see, as if someone had clawed to reach her insides and her abdomen laid bare for them to see in dread meaning the woman wasn't eaten alive. He felt the bile rush up as its insides slushed from whatever was left when she took her slow steps.

A tube or string of something swung like rope in front of her - too small to be an intestine. Dried blood crusted on its fingers and nails. He purged next to him, and looked up to Teacher. Her face was distorted with the horrors Ed didn't want to understand.

It walked forward, in either abject agony or cannibalistic hunger.

His feet suddenly weighed like tonnes of lead metal he couldn't comprehend how to transmute. If they were stuck in this hell maybe it was because he deserved it and for a moment, Ed was glad Alphonse had been spared.

Ed tried to gather the will to face it so they could move along. But he couldn't, even as it was snarling, he couldn't help noticing the same way her hair was gathered to one side. Then he must've imagined the white apron she always wore or the pastel dresses she loved.

He couldn't. He was petrified.

The loud crack of gunfire went off and the body fell from the force of the bullet. He watched as Riza stowed away her pistol and extended a hand out to help Izumi stand, then to Ed, "I'm glad I can count on you to make a spectacle, Edward."


	10. Roy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cut an entire chapter so I could finish in time. Yall didn't need it anyway :'DDD Also, I use chi/flow/dragon's pulse interchangeably. If I don't use chakra its because i dont want to think about naruto.

"Is it something…" Mustang paused, choosing his words. His eyes were narrowed towards the girl sitting across from him on the floor. "Well, can you  _see_  it?"

"The flow?" He heard her scratch her head. "It is more of a feeling, like the wind except you don't feel it with just the sensory nerves on your skin. You feel it from your own chi. When you concentrate and have practiced enough, it'll be like sticking a dagger into the ground and feeling the area's chi around you. And in that same way, the five daggers become an extension of you in the array.

"I've seen different arrays for alchemy, but with alkahestry it's much simpler. Five points for the five places the Dragon's Pulse can leave and enter our bodies. Allow me draw it."

"That's not what I meant." He hesitated - Roy Mustang  _hesitated_. During their "meditating" practice, there was a flickering behind his eyes or in front of his eyes -  _somewhere_ , he didn't know. To be honest, Roy felt silly that after a day of learning, that he'd see something. But he wanted to put it to rest; to be sure if it was memories of sight slipping into his mind or if he should be naive enough to theorize that his blindness could light a path for something bigger. He had nothing to lose. "When you use your "Dragon's Pulse"-"

"It's not  _my_  Dragon's Pulse!"

"You know what I mean," Roy grumbled, gesturing meaningfully to his closed eyes. By the sounds of the strokes of metal engraving the wood and the vibrations of it, he could almost visualize her making the circle. But even that took a lot of effort.

"It's not something that common in my clan, Mister Roy," she said, huffing as she carved. "But Xing is a large country with a lot of history. If you had family from one of the clans, I'd be more inclined to say it wouldn't be a crazy thing to think."

Before he had a chance to ask her more, his train of thought was interrupted by a blast that stole their attention. For a moment, Roy had the luxury of forgetting Amestris's current predicament.

Quick to recover: his mind immediately vaulted to the worst: the Cretans, the Aerugonians or both had arrived in Central over a day sooner than expected. Roy heard the clatter from the drop of a dagger and then footsteps towards the window where he could feel the sun slip through.

"Can you see where that came from?"

She was quiet and the second eruption washed out any smaller detail he tried to listen to. "It's beyond their wall. I can't really tell... There's fire - out there in the city."

He got to his feet slowly. "That's an entire day's worth of travel." His eyebrows raised slowly, talking moreso to himself than to her. "Unless they managed to use the railroads to get here quicker… But that would be reckless. How many trails of smoke do you see?"

"Just two."

"Then it's not heavy artillery," he said suddenly. "And the tremors from before…" He allowed himself some relief, "They weren't tanks."

"What tremors?"

He'd felt it over an hour ago and even asked her if anything was going on outside. "The tremor of something heavy crashing into something solid - like a wall."

Footsteps dashed behind them and a sudden yelp became strangled. The furniture from one of the rooms was knocked around and chairs screeched as they scratched the floor.

"That came from Scar's room," May gasped and he noted the cracks that betrayed the steadiness of her voice. "Maybe he's woken up!" Her own footsteps started out quick and light, like she was sprinting, and then she slowed to stop a few paces in front of him.

He heard it as soon as she did: that haunting, squelching noise that wasn't in his memory to dread until the dead began to rise.

May squeaked at the moment hefty footfalls rattled the floorboards moving towards the center of their path. She ushered him to hide behind the safety of one of the rooms. He heard her trying to control her breathing. Down the hall, wood splintered and cracked with bits of sliding across the floor. She gasped and clasped hands to muffle the sound of her sobs.

"Wait a minute, do you know where Jerso went?"

"He's-" She swallowed thickly, "He's got him."

"Who?"

"I think..." She sounded like slid down to the partition to where it met the floor. "It's Scar."

That stung him too. Like a sucker punch to the diaphragm. The back of his skull burrowed into the wall behind him as he tensed from what he couldn't see. When - how had he turned? None of it had made sense to him.

If he had died from his ailments, that still excluded him from the nationwide transmutation circle. So, what  _in the fuck_  was acting as a catalyst for these bodies to stand on two legs. Roy stood there as it thrashed around in the corridor they were just in, clutching the gloves in his pocket, and found a new meaning to the definition of "useless" - frozen and clueless even without the rain.

"Get up," he ordered.

She whimpered, confused.

"We're leaving Central and we need to find the others to do so."

His brave thoughts were halted when something was flung into the room, crashing into the other side of the room. Whatever it was, May couldn't help screaming. The thing outside roared as well. Not the screech he heard in front of the radio station, nonetheless with the animalistic ferocity he only ever heard in beasts from the zoo. It came bounding down in their direction, judging by the succession of footsteps getting louder and closer. Without sense of sight, he tugged May and moved across the length of the room until the wall adjacent stopped him just in the precise moment it charged through the room. He heard the wreckage and felt it from the dust kicked up and the chips of wood and plaster landing on or around him. Roy didn't recall Scar ever being Armstrong's level of bulk and yet he sounded much larger than that.

"He's right in front of us," May murmured.

Roy played with his chances. Fire sparked from his finger tips and shot point-blank until he got confirmation of a hit the same way he did in Ishval: agonized cries or the smell of burning flesh.

It didn't disappoint, growling in a higher pitch, and the smell of singed meat wafted in the room.

"He's-he's getting back up." May cried, "You've only made him angrier."

He tsked and opened his eyes expecting the world of color he'd known for the last thirty years. Instead he saw the flickering again, wispy tendrils of white and he blinked repeatedly to make sure he wasn't seeing things that weren't there.

Against a black backdrop, a translucent and moving mist or fog swirled in front of him and he noticed the enormity of it as it floated into the air in tandem with the sacrifice getting back up. The vision wasn't consistent, and was more reminiscent of a faulty light bulb shutting on and off, but when he shut his eyes it would disappear.

Roy poised his hand to snap when he saw that same misty object at the tip of where his fingers should be and travelling down the length of his arm until he saw swirling within him. To his right, he saw May's, smaller and petite to fit her stature. He curiously noted how both of them disappeared underneath their feet.

The monster began to storm towards them again. As a test, he quickly ignited the air around the fog and it stopped in its tracks, stumbling backwards. Long ago, Roy had told himself he never had to hear the composition of skin sizzle again; he figured his promises were for a different time.

The next spark was more forceful, concentrating more oxygen in area to combust; his mind's eye unaware of how close the ceiling was to the creature as the flames began to lick overhead. Roy snapped again and again until it broke through the window. The updraft agitated the fire and the drywall began to burn. He controlled the dispelled the oxygen above to dampen the intensity of the fire but he knew that the structure could already be compromised. He also realized the moving mist cleared from his sight, or whatever he had, dispersed as soon as walked forward. May began to cry in earnest and he sympathized with her, he really did. When he turned to tell her as much, he saw her chi, if that's what it really was; it was still, except for the shuddering that could only be explained by her sobs. When he began to reach out to her, there was another against the dark landscape. It was smaller - much, much smaller than hers or his or Scar's and he could see her sink to her feet.

His throat was dry suddenly, but not from the cinder and ashes that were lifted from the breeze. If the other took precautions to seal every exit, every nook, every cranny, who else would there be to stand at a short distance? He asked regardless, "Who...who do you see, May?"

Through her wet cries and sniffling, she confirmed it, "Alphonse." Then, he didn't need any kind of sight to know his face had paled; he could feel it with the drain of blood and the cold that didn't come from the cooling later afternoon.

From the street, Roy heard the growling again, Scar's growling, as it or he got up again after being tossed at a distance in the same way Gluttony was launched. The seconds slowed as he saw three figures running in a straight line, heading towards the hospitals. If he concentrated, the swirls grew less translucent and became solid enough to see white outlines and silhouettes.

He breathed.

Scar was bigger, way bigger than he remembered with arms large enough that he had to rest his knuckles on the ground. His shoulder had him hunching over with grossly swollen muscles rounding out the top. He wouldn't have know it was him unless May had confirmed it.

It roared again. The three that ran stopped. Scar prompted that familiar screech that had once called upon the other sacrifices.

He could see it then, as they moved: the strings attached to them, like marionettes except they sprouted from the tops of the sacrifices' head and only there. It arched high into the sky until it bowed down with the others. All the sacrifices, each and every one of them had this connection that converged to this one location towards the center of the city. Roy turned and he could see the braids and the cloth of the robes May wore. He saw how she sat with her hands holding her face. Same as before, her chi disappeared under her feet. It made sense, after all and in line with her teachings: all of the Dragon's Pulse flowed from the mountain tops, to the sea, emerging from the earth into all living beings.

Alphonse's, however, did not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I also never meant for this to be the end of this. This changed A LOT. More character died than I intended, oops. I have a general idea of how the rest of this story goes which will be continued in another fic or a series of oneshots since multichap fics are the worst for me. BUT YAAAAAAAY. if you got this far. I'm so sorry. <3but thank you!


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